The Woman at Number 24

by Juliet Ashton

  ‘So, let me get this right . . . you’re estranged from your mother because Leo said so?’

  ‘No, no, it wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Wasn’t it? Maybe I’ve got Leo all wrong, but he doesn’t seem the philanthropic sort. Sounds like he couldn’t stand having your mum around.’

  ‘He saw the toll it took on me. Leo did it for me.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Tom was dubious. Silent for a while, he dipped his head and said, rapidly, quietly, ‘It wouldn’t have worked, you know.’ He was eye to eye with Sarah; this close, his eyes were tigerish. ‘You and me.’

  We’re talking about it at last. ‘I shouldn’t have called you names, Tom.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. You thought I deserved them. But it would have been a disaster, wouldn’t it?’ He held her gaze. ‘You and me.’

  ‘Yes, yes, a disaster,’ said Sarah, because she had to. Because it was the right thing to say. Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘But do you ever wonder what if?’

  ‘Eggs!’ said Camilla, thrusting a plate of yellow gloop between them.

  Tom’s efforts not to look guilty made him look guilty as hell. He followed Camilla back to the kitchen, saying over his shoulder, ‘Sarah, seriously, you should call your mum.’

  He didn’t answer my question.

  *

  Keeley pulled a face. ‘You’re twenty minutes late because of a hedgehog funeral? It’s original, I’ll give you that.’ She turned back to her computer screen. ‘I’m interviewing somebody for reception next week, Sarah. Nice guy, great references, experienced.’ She tapped a key here, a key there. ‘This is where you fall to the ground and beg me for your old job back, by the way.’

  Sarah left the office noiselessly.

  *

  The flat was cleaner than it had ever been. The estate agent, Richard, had impressed on Sarah just how lucky she was for his client to even cast his pampered eyes over her home.

  ‘If he likes it he’ll snap it up. Just like that. Are you ready to talk money straight away?’

  ‘I, um, God, well, yes, I suppose.’

  She had strict instructions to stay out of the way. ‘My client’s a very private person.’ With a last neurotic glance at the pink chair, the sideboard, the new curtains, Sarah bolted down to Jane’s flat. Tom was diplomatically out; Sarah was glad and disappointed. She was becoming adept at handling opposing emotions at the same time.

  ‘Maybe the client’s famous,’ said Jane.

  ‘Will you help me with the negotiations?’

  ‘Duh,’ said Jane. ‘Have you seen Mavis since Mikey’s send-off?’ She sounded worried. Despite her mixed feelings for the old woman, Jane kept an eye on her health. ‘The old bat’s been very quiet.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Sarah. The secret of Mavis’s real identity chewed at her, just like the gnawing pain in her stomach which refused to go away. She cocked her head at a noise out in the hall. ‘That’s the estate agent!’

  Jane opened her front door just a crack and she and Sarah jostled to peep out at the balding estate agent and his tall companion.

  ‘Dark glasses?’ scoffed Jane. ‘At night? Poser.’

  There was mumbled conversation at the foot of the stairs, the client looking around him at the communal hall. Sarah was torn between wanting him to be impressed and hoping he was horrified by the noticeboard and the scuffed floor. He could save her, this man she could only see in odd angles through the slit of door. But in saving her, he’d also take away the only security she had left.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Notting Hill, W11

  This calendar is FREE to valued customers!

  Friday 9th September, 2016

  TO TALK MUCH AND ARRIVE NOWHERE IS THE SAME AS CLIMBING A TREE TO CATCH A FISH

  They were squealing like children at a funfair.

  Jane said, ‘You’re sure? Sure sure?’

  ‘Call me Mrs McSure. I couldn’t be surer.’

  They squealed again. They were thrilled but there was fear there, as well.

  ‘This is a champagne moment!’ said Jane.

  A bottle stood in Sarah’s fridge, glamorous among the cheddar and Lurpak, waiting for a special occasion. Leo gave me this. Sarah had hoped the special occasion would be Leo’s return, once and for all. The Gods of Irony were busy today. ‘Is champagne appropriate? I mean, under the circs?’

  ‘One glass can’t hurt!’

  The bubbles leapt in the crystal flutes that had been a wedding present from the staff at St Chad’s; Leo had let Sarah keep them when they divided their worldly goods because they were ‘only factory-made’.

  Jane put down her glass. ‘Is this the right time, though? Doing it alone . . .’

  ‘It’s never the right time,’ said Sarah. ‘Which means it’s always the right time.’

  Support was pledged, and accepted, and cried over a little.

  When Jane left, Sarah poured the rest of the champagne down the sink as Leo’s loud mangling of an operatic aria in the shower seeped up through the floorboards. Sarah grasped the nettle and called him as soon as the singing stopped.

  ‘Darling!’ Leo’s voice was hot in her ear. ‘At last. You’ve been laying low and, oh God, I’ve missed you. Helena’s being an absolute cow and I—’

  ‘Leo!’ Sarah shushed him. Oily Richard had rung her at the clinic to burble that he was ‘very, very confident’ that his client was about to make an offer. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Never good when a woman says that. Now?’

  ‘Can you give me an hour?’

  ‘Excellent. She Who Must Be Obeyed will be having her toes polished or her chakra spray painted or something. See you in one hour, delicious girl.’

  *

  The delicious girl had an appointment at the organic farm cafe with two friends. Both Zelda and Mavis sat opposite Sarah in a booth. The venue, she’d thought, would suit Zelda, but she regretted her decision. Although Zelda Bennison was a woman of the world, she was dressed as Mavis Bennison, and therefore looked as out of place as a snail on a Rolls Royce.

  ‘I see now why you fainted at the carnival,’ said Sarah. ‘You’re frightened of being outed as, well, yourself.’

  ‘I fainted because I saw my agent in the crowd.’ Zelda nodded at Sarah’s surprise. ‘Yes. I used to speak to her once or twice a day. We even went on trips together after Charles died.’

  ‘Did she see you?’

  ‘No. Mavis and I . . .’ Zelda put her hand to her mouth and leaned over the table, whispering, ‘My sister and I relied on the fact that nobody looks twice at a dishevelled old woman.’ Zelda fell quiet until the waitress finished setting down their drinks. ‘If people believe that an author has died they don’t expect to see her large as life on the street, therefore they don’t see her.’

  Unasked, Zelda spoke about the night that Mavis died.

  Of the hours before the death, she said little, just that the tablets were counted out and then counted again. There were enough to do the job, but not enough to cause suspicion. ‘It had to look like accidental suicide by a confused old lady. When, in fact, Mavis was calm, and in total control.’

  Zelda recalled asking one last time, was she sure? ‘Mavis gave me a stinker of a look.’ Zelda skimmed over the convulsions and the pain, limiting herself to the loaded observation that when the final coma descended, it was a blessing. Dreamily, Zelda recalled, ‘I clambered onto the bed beside her. As if we were six again, and frightened of a thunderstorm. I lay beside her. Her breath grew laboured. And I realised something. Mavis didn’t want me with her to appease God. I was there because my sister needed me. Mavis wanted to be held while she slipped away.’

  ‘And after that, you were Mavis.’

  ‘Her life tightened around me like a corset. I was grieving for Mavis, in shock at what I’d done, and full of regret. I was a walking dead woman, Sarah.’ She stopped and put her head to one side. ‘Until I met you.’

  ‘Why did you tell me? You could have carried on ind
efinitely with the pretence.’

  ‘Good question.’ When Zelda pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes it amazed Sarah that this sharp, clever creature had ever passed as Mavis. ‘I told you partly because you’re my friend, and I’ve hurt too many friends with this deceit. Partly because I knew you’d understand. Partly because I’m turning into Mavis.’ Zelda’s mouth turned down. ‘The poverty of her horizons, the lack of intimacy, the lack of comfort . . . bitterness has grown over me like moss. I’m losing my attachment to the world. Then you told me about your mutism as a child, and how you trusted your father enough to speak. Well, I trust you, so I spoke.’

  There was a silver poignancy to that moment in the farm shop cafe. Sarah felt connected to Zelda, to her father, to all the strugglers and triers. ‘I’m glad you did.’

  ‘I’m amazed nobody guessed. I slipped up so many times.’

  ‘But even then we didn’t suspect. You didn’t recognise Lisa in the corner shop and she told everybody you’d snubbed her, which was classic Mavis behaviour.’

  ‘I didn’t recognise her. I barely saw Lisa before my sister passed away.’

  ‘Did you know that Mavis and Lisa were adversaries?’

  ‘Mavis taught me all about her neighbours.’

  ‘I’m getting a mental image of a schoolroom with Mavis as the teacher.’

  ‘It was rather like that.’

  ‘What did she tell you about me?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to hear?’

  Not now you’ve said that! ‘Yes, I think.’

  ‘Mavis told me you were, and I quote, “a fancy-pants doctor who wasn’t clever enough to work with adults, and too thick to notice that your husband was bonking the tart in Flat B”. End of quote. She was scathing about Smith.’

  ‘She was right!’

  ‘No, my sister was never right. She had the opposite of rose-tinted glasses.’

  ‘Coal-tinted?’

  ‘She saw only the bad in everybody. Whereas you, thanks to your father’s advice, see the good.’ Zelda sat up, pushing back her kapok hair. The cheekbones beneath her lacklustre skin jutted out like chic knives, her nose faultlessly drawn. A flash of Zelda’s glamour shimmered and was gone.

  ‘I misread your slip-ups as symptoms,’ said Sarah. ‘Not recognising Lisa. When you asked if I had a husband. Thinking Smith was a man. They all added up to dementia as far as I was concerned.’

  ‘Do you realise you hold my life in your hands?’ Zelda looked impatient when Sarah laughed and told her not to be so dramatic. ‘The stakes are high, Sarah. Why else would I be so anxious to keep my identity hidden? If you choose to tell the authorities, I’ll be arrested. Not just for assisted suicide, but for the fraud of pretending to be Mavis. I’m a criminal twice over. If anybody were to spot me – my agent, even Ramon – we’d be talking in a prison visiting room, not this chichi cafe.’

  ‘It would never come to that. The police would understand.’

  ‘Hardly. I broke the law. I’d be infamous as the writer who faked her own death.’

  ‘Keep your voice down.’ Zelda’s fear was infectious. Their corner booth felt exposed. This is how Zelda feels every time she steps out of number twenty-four.

  ‘I have such a yearning to be free of my secret. To raise my voice right now and tell everybody in this cafe.’

  ‘Don’t, though,’ said Sarah.

  ‘I feel unclean. I want to live honestly again, without looking behind me, without pretending.’

  ‘You’d pay a very high price for that honesty.’ It would be all over Twitter in a millisecond.

  ‘Mavis had a right to make decisions about her own life. Shouldn’t I be able to talk about that?’

  ‘Yes, you should be able to, but . . .’

  Outside, September had turned sulky.

  ‘Don’t expect too much from Leo when you talk with him,’ said Zelda, as they both peered sceptically at the sky.

  ‘I’m not expecting anything,’ said Sarah. ‘I’ll bring him up to date on the flat. As for the personal stuff . . . it’s me who has to explain myself. I led him up the garden path.’

  ‘Nonsense. He used you when you were vulnerable.’

  ‘There were feelings involved, Zelda.’ Only the two people inside a relationship know the truth. Only they know the texture of it, the warp and the weft. She changed the subject. To Tom. This was a subject she’d never tire of, even though he’d told her, in plain English, that they’d dodged a heart-shaped bullet. ‘Tell me again how badly suited Tom and Camilla are!’

  ‘I could be wrong. Age doesn’t guarantee wisdom, as I proved by marrying a gold-digger in my seventies.’

  ‘At least Ramon’s handsome.’

  ‘Yes, the sex was good.’ Zelda rolled her eyes at Sarah’s expression. ‘I haven’t healed over, dear. Surely we all deserve a romp in the hay? Come on. Let’s get you home. The sooner you anaesthetise old Leo the Lion the better.’

  He was bang on time.

  ‘So, darling, we need to talk? What about? Global warming?’ Leo fluttered his eyelashes, mock contrite. ‘Sorry. We’re being terribly, terribly serious, are we?’

  ‘Yes we are, Leo. And it’s about time.’

  ‘Oh I do love it when you go all dominatrix.’ Leo sat in Tom’s chair and looked about the room with an expression of humorous disapproval. ‘Not sure about this refurbishment, darling. Bit modern.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you think of it.’ Sarah’s tongue was unshackled. Not having to please Leo, to placate his toddler ego, was liberating. ‘I love it and that’s the main thing.’

  Leo looked at her appraisingly. Again he didn’t seem to like what he saw.

  Again, Sarah didn’t care. ‘First things first. It looks like we may have an offer on the flat.’

  Leo sat forward, frowning. ‘But, how? We haven’t even put it on the market.’

  ‘Jane worked her magic. She knows the property market much better than I do.’ Sarah enjoyed adding, ‘Or you, for that matter.’ She let him pout and asked, ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Well, I should be, but it means you’ll be moving out, darling.’

  Sarah marvelled at the woman she had so recently been, a woman who would have picked that comment apart and hoped against hope that it meant he loved her. ‘Actually, I’ll be staying put.’ Sarah outlined Jane’s manoeuvre. Leo’s face remained set. ‘It’ll mean a reduction in the price, but I’ll take the hit and make sure you’re not out of pocket.’

  Leo seemed distracted, as if turning something over in his mind. He was a hard man to surprise, but Sarah had managed to do just that. ‘You’re a clever little cat, aren’t you?’ he said.

  The comment took her back to their marriage, when he had often used that light, double-edged tone, flattering and belittling her at the same time. It had always shut her up back then; it was how Leo alerted her to the fact that she’d displeased him, crossed one of the invisible lines that all lovers draw between them.

  Perhaps Leo felt he’d gagged her when she went to the window and looked down at Merrion Road, but in fact Sarah was hiding a devilish smile. She felt electricity pour through her body. Sarah could have lifted a car, or punched through a wall. Or finally chuck out the useless feelings I have left for this faithless man.

  A figure stood at the gate, looking up. Sarah recognised him by the set of his shoulders and the cut of his coat. ‘That’s odd. The guy who’s buying the flat is coming up to the front door.’ Sarah tutted. ‘He should have called first.’

  They both waited for the doorbell.

  ‘Ignore him, darling,’ said Leo into the silence. ‘Don’t grab at the first offer that comes along. Let me take over. I always looked after the money side of things, remember?’

  ‘Ssh.’ Sarah ignored that, and its implication that she shouldn’t worry her pretty little head. A minute ticked by. The bell didn’t ring and the man didn’t retrace his steps. ‘Odd,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Look, darling, forget him. We don’t have lon
g.’

  ‘We never do.’

  ‘Are you going to waste time sulking?’

  ‘I don’t sulk.’ Sarah wondered how she’d put up with this jibber-jabber for so long. ‘Leo,’ she began. ‘This has been nice, but—’

  ‘Nice? More than nice, darling.’ Leo frowned, insulted.

  ‘It’s been less than nice, too.’ Sarah folded her arms and looked down at him. ‘At times I’ve been desolate.’

  ‘But Sarah,’ said Leo, his voice cajoling, ‘all I think about is when I can rush up here to see you. We shouldn’t argue. Not us. Not after we . . . well, darling, you know what we did.’

  ‘That afternoon in the Old Church shouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  He seems genuinely puzzled, thought Sarah, as he went on.

  ‘How can you and I making love be wrong, Sarah?’

  ‘It wasn’t making love.’ Sarah had 20/20 vision now; the rosy post-coital glow was doused forever. ‘It was opportunistic nookie, nothing more. Sex between us is wrong because you’re married, but not to me.’

  ‘Who is this hard woman? Where’s my lovely Sarah gone?’

  ‘She’s not your anything any more, Leo. This relationship—’

  ‘Ooh.’ Wincing, Leo interrupted. ‘Is relationship the right word, darling?’

  ‘What word would you use?’ Sarah narrowed her eyes, genuinely interested. Here was the nub of it; Leo wanted to both own and disown her. He wanted her to be a docile, flexible doll he could take out of the cupboard whenever the fancy took him.

  ‘Words. Who cares about words?’

  ‘Me,’ said Sarah, putting her hand up with a grin she knew would irritate him. ‘I care very much.’ That tingling feeling made her taller. Sarah towered above Leo, like a sovereign staring down at a serf.

  ‘All I know is that I want you, Sarah, like I’ve wanted you since I first clapped eyes on you.’ He beamed at her. ‘Remember? The first time we made love? In your awful flat-share.’