And Georgie smiled gently at the child in the tartan pinafore with the neat white socks.
The playdoh pots were rigidly the same. Bowls made from snakes rolled together. Some tall, some fatter, but pots, useful pots to put things in, not an animal, not a flower or a tree or a nonsense of any sort, not a little mud hut or a human being among them. There were no handles on Angela’s pots and they were painted either red or black.
Never both.
And meanwhile the toddler, Carmen, would be cruising the furniture, wobbling dangerously towards them. When she reached out a chubby little hand for Angela’s precious crayons, prior to sweeping the lot off the table, Angela would scoop them up, saying firmly, ‘No, Carmen, no. You can’t have these, they’ll make a mess or you’ll swallow the tops and choke.’ Reasonable. Caring. Repeating the words of her mother. No sign of natural childhood anger, not that time and not ever. Angie hugged her little step-sister and left her pictures with Georgie. She started to thread some blocks on a spool, entertaining the baby.
‘There’s a good girl,’ Gail would say from her place on the sofa, and smile.
Patsy, aged four, would be sitting on the floor watching something on the TV, following the flickering pictures, unconcerned with the lowered sound. Good as gold.
‘We are rather worried about Angela,’ Georgie explained the first time she called, following up a visit by the educational welfare worker, Mrs Carlyle. ‘We are concerned about her absences from school, and anxious about the causes of the bruises on her legs that seem to appear with such regularity, Concern has been expressed…’
‘That cow up at the school,’ snapped Gail Hopkins, inviting Georgie in, but seemingly unsurprised.
‘There are teachers who are worried, yes, and for several reasons. So I wanted to take the opportunity to talk to you about…’
‘You won’t tell me which bitch has complained, but then you don’t need to, I know. It was her, it was that Miss Parker, wasn’t it? Stupid cow. I know because of the way she’s started nagging on about Angie. And then she asks sly questions about Ray. Oh yes, I know. Angie comes home and tells me all about it. There’s nothing wrong with any of my kids, Mrs Jefferson. They’d bleeding well say if they was unhappy.’
And it did look as though Angie would say. During those visits she seemed more in control than her mother.
‘Why do you think Miss Parker at the school, and myself, why do you think we are so concerned, Mrs Hopkins?’
Gail did not hesitate. Her face, free of make-up that morning, was pale, the skin as fresh and pink as a child’s. Skinny as her eldest daughter, she wore black leggings and a thigh-length sweater, hand-knitted. Her arms and legs were tightly crossed and she shook a baby’s rattle in the hand that was free, shook it to emphasize her points. ‘Because I think it’s the way everything’s going today. Let a kid get a bruise or a cut on the leg and it’s, Oh yeah, let’s get the bastard, all hell breaks loose. When I was a kid not a day went by when I didn’t fall down or scrape myself. My legs were forever covered with bruises. And then there’s where we bloody well live. You lot, you think because some of us have to live in dumps like this that we behave like animals. Well, some of them bleeding well do, it’s true, smashing up the landings and breaking glass, even if it’s been reinforced, they still manage to break the doors. Dealing quite openly. But not us, Mrs Jefferson. We’re not bloody well like that. Ray and me care about the kids, and you might think we’re bloody inadequate and thick because we live like this, but we’re not.’
Gail Hopkins came to a breathless conclusion with sharply protruding brown eyes. They were sharp and knowing. She was no fool and nor was her daughter Angela.
‘You can talk to Angie all you want,’ she went on, unwinding and lighting a fag. ‘Take her off and question her if that’s how you bleeding well feel. It won’t worry me and it won’t worry her. You’d tell the lady the truth, wouldn’t you, Angie?’
It was disturbing to have the matter discussed so openly in front of the child, but, from the moment of Gail’s defensive response, there’d been no simple way of avoiding it. The minute Georgie said what she’d come for, Gail made it her business to include the child deliberately. There were times when Georgie, sitting there being entertained in the Hopkins’s third-floor flat—that’s just what it felt like, as if she was sitting there observing some carefully rehearsed performance—wondered what she was doing harbouring such dark suspicions, such narrow concerns, especially when there were so many others who needed a visit: the pensioners, the handicapped, the debt-ridden, homeless people who were eager to see her and let her in.
Money was short for the Hopkins family, but not worryingly so, they scraped by. There wasn’t much left out of Ray’s pay packet by the time the bills were paid; they couldn’t run a car, much as they’d like to, but they stayed ahead with their rent and the club book, they paid the electric by key meter, and even the TV licence was paid for on a monthly basis. ‘And now that Carmen’s started playgroup I can think about getting out to work again,’ said Gail, who used to work in a betting shop. ‘That’ll make a big difference.’ No, the Hopkinses had no need for that sort of practical help, nor were they under that kind of stress.
And as far as coping with the kids went, as Gail quite sensibly said, ‘Every mother goes barmy once in a while, with the shopping to be hauled all the way up here, no bleeding lift and two small kiddies. And there’s nowhere decent to hang out the washing. They’ve stopped us using the balconies. Said it wasn’t decent, said people don’t like to see it. What crap!’
When Georgie asked about punishment, Gail laughed. ‘Of course I whack them now and then, who doesn’t? And since when has there been a sodding law against it?’
Georgie didn’t tell her that would soon come.
‘And what about Ray?’ Her question sounded sly. ‘Or does he leave the kids to you?’
‘Of course he doesn’t. He’s here in the evenings. They’re up and playing around him then. Sometimes he gets annoyed, of course he does, he’s only bleeding human, when he’s trying to watch the telly and they’re making a racket. We’re all crammed in here like bloody sardines and sometimes it does get on your nerves, but we can’t let Angie play down in the yard with all the dog shit and hooligans. Ray’s not the sort of man who goes out all the time and comes back pissed, Mrs Jefferson, if that’s what you’re trying to make out. We’re not all afraid of the bugger, you know. Not like some I could name.’
‘And what sort of relationship does Ray have with Angela? Was it easy for him to accept another man’s child?’
‘Ray’s fine with Angie. If anything it’s her resents him. Plays us off against each other. She’s quite a jealous little cow, you know. She likes her own way does Angie. She likes the attention, don’t you, eh?’
Angela Hopkins gave an overbright, gappy-toothed smile and continued to play on the floor with the baby.
‘Does Angie see anything of her own father these days?’
‘Nah. The bugger pissed off before she was born. Isn’t that in your file, Mrs Jefferson? I thought you lot had it all in your files?’
Georgie waited till she left the room before asking Gail, ‘Do you think that Angie would feel she could tell you if Ray lost his temper with her? Something like that? Hit her a little harder than he intended? Does she confide in you, Mrs Hopkins?’
‘Angie would tell me. Ray would tell me. We are a close family, Mrs Jefferson. And a few bloody cuts and bruises, a few days off school, don’t prove otherwise. You want to go and look elsewhere, there’s plenty round here you should be bleeding visiting if that’s what you want, I can tell you.’
But then came Angela’s broken arm and the specialist’s suggestion that the injury could have been caused by falling out of a tree, but he would have expected more scratches and general bruising if that were the case. The specialist was suspicious. Angie was quieter this time when Georgie visited the hospital, shy. ‘It hurts,’ she said aggressively, looking smaller t
han ever in the hospital bed with a huge, wild-eyed rabbit tucked in beside her. ‘When are they going to let me go home?’
‘I’m sure it hurts, Angie, they say it’s a nasty break. Has Mum been to see you?’
‘She’s coming tonight. She rang up. D’you think they’ll let me keep this?’ With her good arm she flopped the rabbit up and down. ‘I’d really like to take it home.’
‘With Ray?’
Angela’s eyes were glittery bright, but the child had a broken limb not a fever. ‘Nobody did this to me, nobody!’
And then Georgie knew for the first time, without doubt, that Angela Hopkins was lying. The longer the child could be kept here in hospital, the better. She might be drawn to confide in one of the nurses, or one of the cleaners might be able to encourage her to come out of herself. Georgie sat beside her bed and read her a story. She drew some pictures, they played squiggles, with Angie trying to draw with her left hand and giggling with the effort of trying to lean over with that clumsy sling and her new plaster cast. Georgie scribbled the start of what turned out to look like a fish, the head of a fish and one dorsal fin. Immediately she saw a goldfish pond, lily pads, sunlight on water. She handed the paper to Angie. With an immobile smile on her face the small girl took the black felt pen and filled the page with the shape of a black and menacing shark, a cavernous jaw and serrated teeth. And then she scribbled it over, in black. And handed it back. Still smiling.
‘Angie,’ started Georgie gently. ‘What happened to your arm?’
The little twist of expression could be just a secret sigh. ‘I was lucky I didn’t bust my head. I was quite high up, you know, when I fell. And I didn’t yell or make a fuss. The ambulance man said I was brave.’
‘And there was nobody else in the park at the time? No-one who could have seen you?’
‘No,’ she said defensively. ‘I was all on my own.’
‘Playing in a tree all alone? And the whole of the park deserted? Do you often go to the park alone?’
‘It was early,’ said Angie quickly, lisping. One front tooth was already half grown, the other was just a bulge in her gum. ‘I like to go out early before there’s anyone about. You can get a go on the roundabout and there’s no bigger ones to push you off or make it go too fast so you get dizzy and fall off.’
‘What do you do when the bigger ones come and push you off?’
‘I don’t hang about. I see them coming and I’m off before they can catch me,’ said Angie lightly, licking at the slight chapping around her lips. ‘I keep my eyes peeled when I go to the park, like Mum says, ’cos there’s not just big ones, there’s filthy men, too.’
‘It must be quite frightening to go there and play if you’re always on the watch like that.’ And Georgie scribbled aimlessly while she talked sympathetically, neat little patterns on the paper.
‘No, not when you’re used to it,’ said Angela Hopkins bleakly. ‘I can look after myself.’
Five years old, yet the barrier she had set round herself was as thick and white and protective as that plaster cast that encased her skinny right arm. It held the bone together, kept out the knocks so the body beneath could work its own healing.
Georgie drew a long brown line on the page and Angie followed it in black, a line so straight it could almost have been drawn with a ruler. The thin blue lines going across the page formed a simple cage. Bars. Healing. Simple. And no-one else on earth was going to be allowed in.
Oh, dear God. Had Angela Hopkins known all along that nobody could help her?
EIGHT
GEORGIE STARTED OBSESSIVELY WATCHING…
Sunday was a quiet day, little movement outside the cottage, hers were the only footprints outside on the snowy road. A tractor driven by a red-necked bullock of a man with a balaclava hiding his face rumbled by on several occasions bearing a link box packed tight with hay bales. Around about mid-morning the same vehicle, this time carrying a portable milk tank, spluttered out of Wooton Farm and disappeared up the lane with the same driver in the seat and a gangly, more meagre person hanging dangerously off the back, fag between his lips. Two foxy collies with their ears well back tagged along behind. The tractor slowed in order to pass Georgie’s car—yes, you see, she was watching closely—the two men stared at it and made some comment before going on, leaving caterpillar tracks in the snow.
She set off for a second visit, not eager for a confrontation but prepared to have a go if necessary, to the cottage of the unsavoury Cramer, who had so discourteously nicked Stephen’s worldly goods. A delicate matter, Georgie was not quite sure how to broach it, and how could she be certain that the accusations made by the melancholy Mr Horsefield were true?
Dusk. The only lights she could see came from the Horsefields’ house. The rest were in darkness. The sun was a golden moon surrounded by a yellow-green light. To either side of it the hills, massive and overwhelming, turned a deeper and deeper purple as it sank. The sun’s rim dipped behind the hills, stayed for a minute, then disappeared behind them as she watched. The world gurgled water. The sky was defrosting with drippy kitchen sounds. The stream was full and flowing fast, but the icicles that clung to its fraying edges were melting quickly.
Down the road determinedly went Georgie Jefferson, passing the farm on her right, the Horsefields’ house on her left, through the rushing ford she paddled, and then up the hill until she reached the only other habitation to make up the hamlet of Wooton-Coney. A rustic response to Mount Kurzon Buildings. More ramshackle than Furze Pen Cottage, the melting patches of snow left a grey unhealthy shade of thatch, tufted and tattered and clumped to the roof. The front door was a scarred and multi-nailed affair, the tiny garden neglected, overgrown with briars and brambles, dead now, of course, but straggled messily across the white grass. In summer it must be hard to pass through what would surely be a riot of undergrowth. The one fruit tree to the right of the path was dead, strangled by a cruel skirt of barbed wire that someone had wound round its trunk in its infancy, and its gnarled, misshapen branches dripped with accusing, tortured tumours.
‘My name is Georgina Jefferson, I am Stephen Southwell’s sister.’ She smiled. And she nodded behind her to show the slatternly girl which way she’d come. ‘I’m down here for the weekend, so I thought I’d pop over and introduce myself.’
The girl in the blue jeans was in her early twenties, muffled against the cold with a long purple scarf that twisted round her neck like lagging and tied round her back like a halter. It was tangled in several places in straw-coloured, lustreless hair. The hairy sweater that drowned her slight frame was outsize and heavy, and sore red fingers spidered out from fingerless mittens. The several pairs of socks on her feet gave her movements that dragging sound.
‘Oh?’ she said, her blue eyes startlingly bright. ‘Oh?’ And her hand would have moved to her mouth, except that she restrained it. ‘We never thought anyone’d come down.’
‘Who is it, Donna?’ growled a voice from within.
‘Hang on a sec’
She must get in. This was important. Georgie asked quickly, ‘Did you know Stephen? Only, if you did know him, I wondered if you’d give me a moment to ask a few questions, because I never met him and this is my only opportunity to find out more about him.’
Her words sounded pathetic, verging on the needy. And she felt needy, too, standing there like a fool on the front doorstep of a stranger, confessing to what felt like carelessness. ‘I’ve been round to the Horsefields, I called round there this morning, but talking was difficult because Mrs Horsefield was rather flustered. She’s not very well, is she? Your neighbour?’ She attempted to make conversation.
‘You’d better come in then,’ sniffed the girl.
If Donna had been a child you would have said she was sulking. Georgie followed as she shuffled through the dark and airless passage, and Donna grunted, ‘He’s in there.’
The room was similar in size and shape to the one at Furze Pen, and almost as spartan. The man who sat beside the f
ire was lanky and leathery, with large angry hands and a thick mat of dirty hair. He looked up when Georgie entered but carried on cleaning his gun, rubbing oil along the barrel, rooting through the tube with a frazzled pipe cleaner. ‘I suppose you’ve come about his things?’
She hadn’t imagined it would be this easy. The girl had taken the only seat, the moulded plastic chair on the other side of the fire; the sofa, the only alternative, was covered with a filthy old cover. No wonder the girl seemed cold, the air in the room was damp and freezing, and Cramer’s answer to the arctic conditions was a coalman’s leather jerkin and a blanket like the one on the sofa thrown round his shoulders.
Georgie stood uneasily, and at last the girl, Donna, got up from her seat with a small gesture of annoyance and squatted on the hearth’s limp rug. Georgie felt an instinctive dislike of the man with the uneven teeth and the stubbled chin, the man so absorbed in his weapon, as she took the uncomfortable chair so grudgingly offered. Cramer himself enjoyed the one armchair, stained and filthy though it was. ‘Ah, yes. Mr Horsefield suggested you might know something about Stephen’s furniture.’
‘There weren’t much.’ And as he spoke the tiny roll-up in his mouth moved sullenly with his bottom lip.
The faded curtains were drawn. The icy room was lit by one bare bulb. Crumpled tins of extra-strength lager and plates containing half-finished meals, tomato sauce gone hard and the odd cigarette stubbed out in the mess, littered the floor. The mean piece of rug round the fire was charred and criss-crossed with old burns, bald and blackened like a burned field of stubble. This cottage was certainly no contender for Homes and Gardens. ‘It’s not so much the furniture that interests me actually, I’m sure there must have been paintings.’
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