The Girl Who Just Appeared

by Jonathan Harvey

  Hope Street, the street that linked the two cathedrals. Hope Street, the street that Gambier Terrace curled off. Francesca had only had to step outside her house to tout her wares. I had to admire her brass neck, it had to be said. Aside from working at home, that was one quick commute to the office.

  I entered the words ‘Policeman missing after Toxteth riots.’ This time, lots more info about the riots. Nothing about a missing policeman. This surprised me. Surely someone must have realized he had gone missing. Surely he had friends, a family. He certainly had workmates – did none of them report him missing? Surely it would have been noticed that he hadn’t turned up for work the next week.

  I thought about what Darren’s teacher had said to him that day outside the house. How he liked to write stories. He had kept a diary, after all. So now I entered the words ‘Darren Boyle writer.’ Lots of articles came up about the film director Danny Boyle and his thoughts on writing. Again all roads led to zero.

  I remembered that on the TV genealogy shows they were always looking up the census to see who lived where at a certain time. I entered, ‘1982 census.’ Nothing. But I did find many links about the 1981 census, so I re-entered, ‘Gambier Terrace 1981 census.’ This time I learned that all censuses were kept secret till a hundred years later. Boo, hiss! However, I did discover that Stuart Sutcliffe had lived in Gambier Terrace. I clicked on the link thinking this was the Yorkshire Ripper, but it wasn’t – it was someone who had been in the Beatles before they got famous. Another link was titled ‘Your Memories of the Riots.’ I clicked on it and read:

  I was living in a basement flat in Gambier Terrace in Liverpool in 1981, just behind the Cathedral. I was living with my wife and twin sons. A policeman was killed nearby on Friday 3 July in some incident involving a car.

  The tension in the city on the Saturday was palpable and when we came back from a club at 3 a.m. we found Toxteth in the grip of the riots. Sunday deteriorated. From a neighbour’s flat we could see Upper Parliament Street alight, the Racquet Club up in flames, and the Rialto too. The police were everywhere. It was so frightening, it affected everyone. And when we woke up the next morning the devastation was incredible.

  Even though I had already read Darren’s disturbing account of events that hot weekend in 1981, I suddenly found this secondary evidence unsettling. It hadn’t just affected the Boyles; it appeared to have devastated a community. Of course, I already knew that from reading different bits and bobs online, though thus far I’d not had chance to spend any proper time really digesting what had happened that weekend and how it had shaped the area in which I was now staying.

  I spent the morning reading account after account of the riots online. The articles were full of grainy black-and-white pictures of policemen with shields, burnt-out buildings, burnt-out milk floats. On some of the pieces, there would be a photo of the same view now, sometimes unrecognizable from the original image, as buildings had been razed to the ground. I saved some of the pictures and emailed them to myself so that I could view them on my phone, then decided to spend the morning walking around the area looking at them with Michael.

  I suppose what shocked me most was just how close everything was to my new home. The first place I visited was what had been the Rialto ballroom. Darren had made it sound magical when he’d stood outside it imagining Samantha’s parents meeting there. I had the picture of it burning on my phone. I held it up and compared the then and now, and was hit by a wave of sadness. They’d kept the original shape, a curved corner, a cylindrical tower, but there was something so inauthentic about the replacement building. As if the designer of Toytown had said, ‘This can be your new Rialto.’ There was little magical about the municipal-blue window frames and the tiny blocked prison-like windows either side of it.

  I wondered where Samantha was now. What did she have to tell Darren? She was clearly bright. Maybe she was telling him she was leaving Liverpool to go to university. I liked that idea. Girl power! I wondered if her parents still passed this corner and marvelled at how their palace of dreams had changed.

  From there I went to Upper Parliament Street, or ‘Parlie’, as the man in the article had described it. The beautiful, elegant Georgian terrace still stood. If only Samantha’s parents had met there, their palace of dreams would still be intact. This was an area that had once had a lot of money passing through it, perhaps when Liverpool was at the centre of the slave trade. I didn’t know. But I thought of Fatty Arbuckle and her disappointment that the area had gone to the dogs. Maybe she had too. If she really was the size Francesca claimed she was in the diary, maybe she was six feet under by now, dead from a heart attack. I wondered if she was so huge they’d had to winch her rotting corpse out through one of the upstairs windows.

  After these two views I gave up comparing the then and now and just walked around the streets. Thus far I had known parts of the area through Google Maps and trying to imagine Francesca walking about with me in her pram; then I had explored a nearby street and pub with Iggy, reminiscing about John Lennon. Now, however, I felt an emotional tie to the area. My family had lived here and seen the area change forever during the riots, the year before my birth. Though it still felt rather alien to me, dare I say it was beginning to feel like home? Was I becoming an adopted Scouser? An adopted-out Scouser certainly.

  I felt less like a local when I walked past several young men in tracksuits, their hands stuffed down the front of their pants, like Iggy, with various Staffies and pit bulls on or off leads. I think had I not met Iggy, I might have felt intimidated by them, but I didn’t. I gave them all a smile and a cheery ‘Hi!’ and they giggled and gave me ‘All right’s back, each time with a guffaw at the state of Michael compared to their butch beasts.

  As I returned to the terrace, I passed the Rialto once again and fantasized some more. Samantha had gone to university, gained a first at Oxford, in politics, and then returned home and married Darren. I made a mental note to look up Samantha Boyle online when I got in. But then I thought, No, Lucy would never have allowed that.

  Lucy. I had forgotten all about her. Who was she? And how did she fit into the pattern I had established in my head? When I thought of 32B in 1981, I pictured the building as a doll’s house with the front off. Richie and his mum on the ground floor, Fatty Arbuckle lying on her sofa on the top floor, eating a selection box (all year round), Darren and his ma and Robert in the middle. And yet Lucy seemed to appear out of nowhere when she knew that Darren was on his own. Did she live there too? Was there a flat I was yet to discover? I hurried home and saw, no, I was right – there were only three flats at number 32. Maybe she lived in one of the adjoining houses. Or maybe – and this thought excited me – she lived with Fatty Arbuckle or Richie. Was she Fatty’s daughter? Or was she in fact Richie’s sister? Richie’s family had a surname. I’m sure Darren had mentioned it in the diary, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember it. I had to find it. I had to wake Jax. I hurried into the hall, dragging Michael with me so that he hit a skid on the tiled flooring. I banged on Jax’s door, no longer standing on ceremony, and called her name. I banged again. Then called her mobile. Again, I heard it ringing inside the flat. Oh God, was she OK? If she had gone out, why hadn’t she taken her phone? And if she was in, why wasn’t she answering the door? I banged again, this time with a ferocity that could have woken the dead.

  ‘Careful, dear, you’ll take the door off its hinges,’ I heard a voice boom from the top of the stairs. I looked up to locate the owner of the voice. Coming down the stairs now was what I can only describe as a symphony in puce. Her voice was commanding, even if her walk down the stairs was less so. She looked about seventy and was dressed as if going for a jog – sportswear, headband, bottle of water in her hand, tidy rucksack strapped so tight to her back I was amazed she could still breathe.

  ‘Sorry,’ I gasped, and the woman sort of harrumphed and continued on past me. I grabbed my chance. ‘Excuse me, sorry, but I’m Holly. I just moved in, Flat B. I was wonder
ing . . .’

  I was wondering what all that screaming was last night.

  I was wondering if you ever knew Fatty Arbuckle.

  The woman looked back. Just then my mobile rang. Convinced it was going to be Jax phoning me back, I hit ‘accept’.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Darling, how’s Michael?’

  I knew the voice instantly. Of course.

  ‘Sylvie?’

  I was so shocked I turned towards the wall, feeling like I was imploding. I might fall at any second and headbutt the mustard wallpaper.

  ‘Who else?!’

  I turned back to face my neighbour, but just caught sight of the front door swinging shut. I sank onto the bottom step of the staircase.

  ‘Oh, he’s fine. He’s . . . he’s sat here with me.’

  ‘Put him on.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Put him on. I want to speak to him.’

  ‘Erm, OK.’

  I held the phone to Michael’s ear, where he now sat between my legs. Sylvie’s voice was so loud I could hear it rattling out of my mobile.

  ‘Darling, it’s Mummy. Is Holly looking after you OK? I bet she’s spoiling you rotten. Oh, Mummy is missing you. It’s so cold over here I could do with a massive hug.’

  And then she rattled off into peals of laughter. I couldn’t quite believe I was sitting at the bottom of a staircase holding a phone to a dog’s ear so his ‘owner’ could have a word.

  ‘Are you eating OK, my lovely? Is she giving you enough food? I know what a fussy eater you are, dear heart. Oh, I can hear you whimpering.’

  He wasn’t.

  ‘It’s like you’re talking to me. Oh, I can’t bear it. I had a feeling. A knot in the pit of my stomach. And I just knew I had to call you because I knew you were missing Mummy.’

  And then I could hear her crying. I waited for the tears to subside, knowing they would take quite a while. Now that Sylvie didn’t get much acting work, she often moaned about not having a cathartic space to get any pent-up feelings out of her system. Some days she had even said, ‘I am going to my room to scream and cry. No disturbing.’ And though it was completely bonkers, me sat there holding a phone to a dog and listening to someone cry, it also felt reassuringly familiar, and for the first time in a good few days I felt myself relax. Because even though Sylvie had treated me like dirt, even though I hated her guts, I knew where I stood with her, knew who I was (her slave, of course). Up here in Liverpool with my dreams of discovering who I was and where I’d come from, I’d felt confused at best, sinking at worst. Sylvie was a reminder of more straightforward times and I never thought I’d relish any contact with her.

  Eventually the tears ran dry and I heard her sigh heavily, calmer now. I returned the phone to my ear. Michael hadn’t budged during the whole call. Maybe he was deaf.

  ‘I hope I haven’t agitated him too much.’

  ‘He’s . . . looking a little worried,’ I lied.

  ‘Oh God. That is beyond. I can’t bear to think of him upset.’

  ‘He’s . . . calming down now. I think he’ll pull through.’

  ‘Do you? Do you?’

  ‘I think he’s . . . Oh my God, yes, he is – he’s smiling.’

  Somebody section me now!

  ‘Awwwww, my little lamb chop Mikey plops.’

  Actually, somebody pass me a sick bucket now!

  ‘How’s Canada?’ I continued.

  ‘Hellishly cold. I’ve nipples like chapel hat pegs. How’s London?’

  ‘Liverpool,’ I corrected.

  ‘Oh, what’ve you gone there for, darling?’

  Why was I doing this? Why was I even entertaining her? I should just hang up and be done with it.

  But maybe she was ringing to arrange her getting Michael back off me.

  ‘Oh, just some personal stuff. I did tell you.’

  ‘You know, Holly, I have the world’s most ineffective PA out here.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ I couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘Marybeth. What sort of a name is that?’

  ‘I think it was one of the cops in Cagney and Lacey.’

  ‘Of course! The wonderful and eponymous Tyney!’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Tyne Daly! We did Jane! together.’

  Was she spilling more sexual exploits of a lesbiotic nature?

  ‘Jane who?’

  ‘No! Jane! The musical version of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane! Tyne is wonderful and so, so, so eponymous.’

  I wasn’t sure she knew what eponymous meant. Still . . .

  ‘I loved her so much, you know, Holly. She was such an eponymous actress. I have no idea why she stopped speaking to me once the reviews came out. Little bit jealous if you ask me. And how was I to know she was dating Igor?’

  I chose not to go there.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve got to—’

  ‘Oh, don’t go, Holly.’

  She was being overbearingly chummy. She sounded a bit like Miranda Hart in Call the Midwife. And it would be impossible to put the phone down on her.

  ‘You’ll never guess what she did between Montreal and Quebec.’

  ‘Spontaneously human-combusted?’ I was feeling mutinous.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Nothing. What did she do between Montreal and Quebec?’

  ‘Lost my fucking costumes, darling.’

  I stifled a giggle, trying to find some comradeship with poor Marybeth, and stopped myself from saying, ‘I’m sure it was the airline that lost them Sylvie, not your PA.’

  ‘I had to wear off the peg. Off the peg, Holly, in Quebec! Have you ever been to Quebec?’

  ‘Not since your last tour.’ But she wasn’t listening.

  ‘It’s a ball gown desert.’ And I could hear her anger bubbling over across the miles.

  ‘What time is it there?’ I asked, suddenly realizing it must be really late.

  ‘Four a.m. I have jet lag and Marybeth’s gone to A and E. Or whatever they call it over here.’

  ‘Oh, what’s the matter with her?’

  ‘She walked into the wall of my suite. No doubt she’ll say she was pushed, the little bitch.’

  I said nothing. My heart went out to Marybeth.

  ‘Is she Canadian?’

  ‘Allegedly. Keeps going on about family in Leeds. Like I’m interested. Anyway, here’s the thing.’

  I hated the phrase ‘Here’s the thing.’ One of the good things about Liverpool is not a single person I had met had used it. Which was a thing. And I hated that phrase ‘Is that a thing now?’ Grrr.

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  Oh God. Here we go, I thought. The doors to hell just swung open.

  ‘I think I may have acted a little hastily over that horrendous sofa you made me buy.’

  ‘I did no such thing.’

  ‘Mea culpa, as they say in Spain. Mea culpa.’

  ‘You chose it, Sylvie.’

  She powered through, not letting me sidetrack her with a little thing like the truth.

  ‘If I double your wages and fly you here first class, would you consider taking your job back?’

  Shit. Shit.

  ‘But, Sylvie—’

  ‘Don’t say yes now. Sleep on it. Think about it. Let me know. Sylvie needs you.’

  ‘You said I was useless.’

  ‘I was mentally unbalanced.’

  ‘Just for a change.’

  ‘Sorry? This line . . .’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I think I’ve been suffering from depression. It clouds the judgement.’

  That was another thing I hated. People jumping on the depression bandwagon. Some people had one bad day or were a bit fed up and bandied the word ‘depressed’ about like nobody’s business. Yet true depression could be crippling.

  ‘What sort?’ I asked, the devil in me.

  ‘I’m not sure. Post . . .’

  ‘Natal?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Sylvie, your son’s thirty-four.�
��

  ‘Maybe it was delayed. It’s post something, anyway.’

  Yes, post nobody wanting to hire you.

  ‘If I was at all unfair with you, then you need to hear it wasn’t my fault. It was because I was undiagnosed.’

  ‘Have you been diagnosed?’

  ‘Yes. It’s clinical.’

  ‘By a clinician?’

  ‘No, not a clinician, per se . . .’

  ‘Have you self-diagnosed, Sylvie?’

  Her voice was small now. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ And I hung up.

  I stared at Jax’s front door. There were four different Yale and Chubb locks on it in a line from the bottom to the top. Talk about Fort Knox.

  And then I was hit by a flashback to last night. Standing on Rose’s landing. I saw the bedroom door ahead of me, one of the ones I didn’t go through. And I wondered, Why would someone put a padlock on a bedroom door?

  TEN

  ‘Maybe they’re kinky,’ said Iggy three days later, as he lifted his second pint of Guinness to his lips, before smacking the moustache of froth it left away with his sleeve.

  ‘Kinky?’ I said, ripping the corner of a spare beer mat and wondering at how translucent his skin looked when the light from Ye Crack’s windows hit his face.

  ‘You know. They’re into S and M. Loads of people are getting into it now, coz of that book.’

  I loved the way he said ‘book’, like it was spelled ‘buke’. I was marvelling at this instead of answering him, so he explained.

  ‘Fifty Shades of Shite.’ And he winked. And I giggled.

  It felt very bohemian, drinking in the middle of the day, no work to head back for, few responsibilities. And it felt novel, drinking with a friend, having a social life, and above that my friend was a cheeky scally Scouser. How my life had changed! Two men who looked to be in their eighties were the only other people in our back room of the pub. Gaunt, caps on their heads, shiny old suits, they wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Lowry painting.