by Nicci French
‘Do? What can I do?’
‘You can go to the police,’ he said.
‘What good would that do? What am I asking them to investigate? My little daughter’s having a bad time and she ruined her precious doll and then someone sewed it back together again.’
‘If you put it like that,’ said Aidan.
‘It feels like a message. Like a warning or a curse.’
NINETEEN
For once I let Aidan stay, but when it was almost light I nudged him awake.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
I felt a pang as I watched him dress. I would have liked the three of us to spend the day together. We could have gone to the park and fed the squirrels. But we were still leading our separate lives. Aidan was meeting his colleague, Frederick Gordon or Gordon Frederick, I couldn’t remember which way round it was, in Birmingham at a conference on bioenergy, and Poppy and I were taking the train to visit my mother on the outskirts of Abingdon. It was the right thing to do. As a mother, she had been anxious and fretful, but as a grandmother she was a figure of kindness and comfort. She had arranged for Poppy to have a ride on a neighbour’s ancient donkey. ‘Sam the gonkey,’ Poppy called him, as she sat on his coarse back, wearing an expression of ardent solemnity.
We had lunch in the garden, which was as immaculate as her living room, scarcely a leaf out of place, then went to the playground. I watched Poppy as I pushed her on the swings, perched opposite her on the see-saw, helped her clamber up the climbing frame. She was still quiet, but seemed less feverishly clingy; it was as if a storm had passed.
Walking back to the house, Poppy wheeling and skipping ahead of us, my mother said in a low voice: ‘Tess, I have to ask you, that time Jason phoned…’
She let the sentence trail away. I saw that she was embarrassed.
‘You mean when he asked about Poppy and me having an arrangement to see you?’
‘Yes. Which was the first I’d heard of it.’
‘That was just a mix-up,’ I said airily. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘He didn’t seem very happy with you.’
I looked at her anxious face that was softening and loosening with age, the frown marks and folds of worry deeper than I remembered.
‘He isn’t very happy with me, Mum, that’s the truth, but it’s all right. We’re separated. I don’t have to worry about his moods anymore. The only relationship I have with him now is as the father of Poppy.’
Poppy, a few feet ahead of us, lifted her foot and brought it down firmly on a large snail.
‘She seems fine,’ said my mother.
I opened my mouth to say that actually Poppy wasn’t fine at all, that she was in some kind of trouble. I thought of telling my mother everything that I feared and suspected. I imagined how her shoulders would sag and her mouth would draw down in that expression of helpless sadness.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Poppy’s great.’
‘Then that’s all the matters,’ said my mother placidly.
But that evening, as I sat by her bed, Poppy suddenly said: ‘Naughty girl.’
‘Who’s naughty?’
Poppy gazed at me.
‘You’re my lovely, good girl,’ I said. ‘Did someone say you were naughty?’
‘Bad,’ said Poppy. ‘Watching you.’
* * *
The following day started peacefully enough. We were both up early. Before breakfast, at Poppy’s insistence, we went through the dressing-up clothes for her school. I lifted each item out of the bag and held it up for Poppy to agree or disagree: she had strong opinions about such things. She enthusiastically accepted two flowery dresses that must have belonged to Emily, an old leather bag that snapped shut, white gloves that came up to the elbow. She loved the beads and the bangles that had been in the backpack. She wasn’t so keen on Jason’s natty waistcoat (which I had given him shortly after we met) and she wavered for several minutes over the flat cap, corduroy with a maroon-coloured peak, before trying it on in front of the mirror, giggling at how it came over her eyes and finally taking it. Her favourite was a large scarf in a green and pink zigzag pattern.
Then we ate buttery crumpets with honey for breakfast and walked to Gina’s house hand in hand. Poppy jumped over cracks and counted how many dogs we passed. I left her there and caught the bus to my school. I had a meeting with a parent after school, but managed to get back to collect Poppy by five.
Gina answered the door.
‘I was expecting Laurie,’ I said.
‘He’s with his mother. I took the day off. I just suddenly felt I had to. Honestly, Tess, I’ll look back at these times and see how I missed my children’s growing-up years. But I’m completely exhausted. How does Laurie do this day after day? Come in and excuse the mess. We’ve made cupcakes. Nellie’s asleep for once, so I had time. They’re decorating them now.’
‘This is so nice.’ I looked around at the chaos in the kitchen. Jake was covered in flour and Poppy had green and yellow dabs round her mouth and in her hair, and thickly sticky fingers. She barely looked up from her misshapen little cakes violently slathered in icing.
‘It’s been fun,’ said Gina.
‘Thank you.’
Gina turned and spoke in a low voice. ‘Are we OK?’
‘We are. Of course we are. It wasn’t your fault; I know that. You were just the messenger and I do know you were in an impossible position. It just caught me off balance. And I’ve been worrying about Poppy.’
‘She’s been fine today.’
‘Good. Did Lotty say anything?’
‘No.’ Gina took my hand. ‘What’s up?’
‘There’ve been things – it’s a long story. Not for now.’
‘We need another Negroni.’
‘We do.’
‘God, I’m relieved we’re OK. I’ve been so worried. I’m really sorry, Tess.’
‘It’s me who’s sorry.’
We both gave strangled little laughs and I hugged Gina and Gina sniffed loudly and kissed me on the cheek.
‘We need to look after each other,’ she said.
‘Yeah.’
She looked at me more closely. ‘No, I mean really. I know the state of mind where you’re already feeling anxious and then some random thing triggers you and it plugs right into your anxieties.’
I nodded automatically at this and realised that I had no idea what she was talking about.
‘What do you mean “triggers”?’
‘I’ve been exactly like that with Jake. Some horror that’s got nothing to do with you makes you worry about your child. Laurie told me about it.’
I felt completely confused. Was I being stupid?
‘I’m sorry, Gina. I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You see a story about a woman falling from a tower block and then you get worried that Laurie will tell the children about it. He wouldn’t do that.’
Now I felt even more confused.
‘You’ve got this wrong,’ I said.
‘Really? I know that my mind tends to drift when Laurie is talking but I’m sure he said something about a woman falling from a tower.’
‘I was just asking about fairy stories.’
‘Oh, I see. Sorry. My mistake.’
‘Hang on.’ I beckoned Gina out of the kitchen into the hall. ‘A woman falling from a tower block? What happened? Did she die?’
Gina shrugged.
‘I just read it online on some local news website. I can’t remember where. A woman found at the foot of a tower block. I don’t know whether she fell or jumped.’
‘Was it in London? When did it happen?’
‘I’ve told you everything I know.’ Gina looked at me with concern. ‘What is it? I mean, it’s awful, but it’s got nothing to do with anything, has it?’
‘No,’ I said slowly. ‘No, of course not. How could it?’
* * *
I only allowed myself to go online once Poppy was safely asleep, her mouth slightly open, her ch
est rising and falling, her face untroubled.
I opened up my laptop and searched for ‘Woman dies falling from building’. And my screen filled up.
A young woman had fallen to her death during the early hours of the morning from her eighth-storey flat near Elephant and Castle. No one else was involved. There wasn’t much. No name, no photos, no explanation.
It was just an everyday kind of tragedy – a young woman losing her life, or taking her life, falling from a block of flats.
A young woman falling from a tower.
I reread the story. It was exactly what I had been looking for, what I had searched through the murder statistics for and had failed to find. But there was a problem. It had happened today, Monday. The woman had died after Poppy had drawn her picture, not before.
I felt as if I had captured something and then it had run through my hands.
TWENTY
Poppy wet the bed again in the night. I carried her to the bath and washed her down. I dried her and pulled on a clean pair of pyjamas, murmuring to her all the while as reassuringly and lovingly as I could. I carried her to the soft chair near the window and stripped her bed, giving silent thanks for the plastic sheet.
When the bed was ready again, I picked Poppy up, but when I tried to put her back in her bed, she wouldn’t let go and started crying desperately. I could feel her sharp little fingers clutching me so tightly that it almost hurt. To release her, I would have had to prise the fingers off one by one.
‘It’s OK, honey.’
I carried Poppy through to my own bedroom and laid her down and fetched a large bath towel and spread it under her. I switched the light off and got into bed beside her. Poppy was already asleep, but still whimpering. I could feel the vibration of the sobs rippling through the bed.
For what felt like hours, I thought about our situation. It couldn’t go on like this. I needed help, but what kind?
Finally I slept but it was as if I was continually waking and sleeping for the entire night, until what was real and what was a dream became confused.
When I properly woke, I felt as if I was being dragged into the light out of a deep, dark cave, my eyes glued together, my head stuffed with spiky straw. Poppy was clambering over me and began bouncing on the bed. After a few heavy jumps, she lost her balance and fell heavily across me. I felt an impulse of anger and then remembered the events of the night and the anger changed to relief. Wild boisterousness was way better than last night. Anything was better than last night.
I looked at the clock. I had forgotten to set the alarm and it was ten past eight. There wasn’t much time. I felt sticky and battered. I had the quickest of showers and then carried Poppy into the shower too, and washed her all over while she yelled furiously and squirmed beneath my hands.
I pulled on my clothes and found underwear and a pinafore dress for Poppy. Breakfast was a cup of coffee for me and a bowl of cornflakes for Poppy. Finding Poppy’s school folder and her jacket, remembering the bag of dressing-up clothes, remembering my laptop and school lanyard, and getting out of the door was so frantic that it was only once we had collected Jake, and were halfway to school, that I realised that Poppy seemed a little more like her old self, looking around and commenting on almost everything she saw: a woman on a bicycle, another woman leading one very small dog and one very large dog.
‘That’s the baby dog,’ Poppy told Jake.
I tried to explain that there were different kinds of dogs and that different breeds of dogs were different sizes. Poppy was still looking around and I wasn’t sure if she was paying attention.
‘I did see a lion,’ she said suddenly.
‘What? Where?’
‘I did see a lion and…’ Poppy was frowning with effort. ‘And a parrot. And a dog. And a…’ There was another pause as she searched for the word. ‘A fant.’ She paused. ‘An elfant,’ she said.
‘That’s a lot of animals.’ I was quite impressed with Poppy’s vocabulary. ‘Where did you see them?’
Poppy gazed at me as if she were baffled by my ignorance.
‘They live in the zoo.’
I found it difficult to reply to this. One of the things parents did with their children was to take them to the zoo, and I had vivid memories from my own childhood of the sour reek of the lion house and the shrieks of monkeys. I remembered feeding time when a white tiger had clambered up a tree trunk to retrieve a joint of meat. But even as a child I hadn’t really enjoyed seeing animals behind bars. So I had never taken Poppy to a zoo and I was almost certain that Jason hadn’t either. And Laurie wouldn’t have taken her, not without saying.
‘Did you go to the zoo with your school?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Poppy. ‘When I used to be a lion.’
‘No,’ said Jake equally firmly.
It was hard to believe Poppy. Normally even the most routine school excursion needed parental permission and form filling. Was it possible that the school had taken the children to the zoo and I hadn’t known, and Poppy was only mentioning it now? Probably she was making it up, imagining it from a book or something, but after I dropped Poppy and Jake off and left Jason and Emily’s cast-offs with the nursery assistant, I approached Lotty. She had a mildly harassed air and looked worried when she saw me. I knew the feeling. Parents were usually bringers of bad news.
‘It’s really nothing. I just wanted to ask about something Poppy said on the way to school today. She said she’d been to the zoo. We’ve never taken her to one. I wondered if somehow she might have gone with the school without me realising?’
‘Don’t worry. We’ll send you a form.’
‘What do you mean? What form?’
‘It won’t be for ages. We told them about going to the zoo next term. We talked about what they are, what animals are there, we’ll get them to draw pictures and then we’ll go and see them. But you’ll get a handout with all the details.’
I was so confused by this that I couldn’t think of anything to say, but it didn’t matter because Lotty had run across the classroom to rescue a little boy who had clambered onto a table. I left the school feeling like I was in a fog.
Suddenly I stopped. There was nothing wrong with Poppy. And I knew what I had to do.
TWENTY-ONE
The detective sat down opposite me. She had an expression of wary patience.
‘I’m having a busy day. So?’ Kelly Jordan made a gesture inviting me to speak.
‘You remember I showed you the drawing by my daughter? The drawing of a woman falling from a tower?’
‘Yes, I remember.’
She said this like she was talking of a faintly unpleasant memory, a headache or a twisted ankle.
I took out my phone and looked at it.
‘Sorry. I’ve lost it. Hang on, it won’t take a minute.’ After a little more than a minute of frantic clicking and scrolling, I found the local news story and handed the phone to the detective, who read it and handed the phone back.
‘So what do you think?’ I said.
‘What do you think?’
‘Isn’t it significant? A woman falling from a tower. It’s like Poppy’s drawing.’
Kelly Jordan took a breath.
‘As I’m sure you’ve noticed, this happened yesterday. So the woman fell from the tower after your daughter did her drawing, not before. I don’t really see the point of this.’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought. It’s not just the picture. When I talked to Poppy, she said that a woman did fall from the tower. So obviously I thought it was about something that had happened.’
‘Or that she thought had happened. Or imagined had happened.’
‘Yes, well, whatever. But this morning I was taking Poppy to school and she said that she’d been to the zoo. That seemed weird to me because I didn’t think she’d ever been to one; I would have known if Jason had taken her. So I asked her teacher and it turned out that they’re planning a visit to the zoo next term. In the future.’
There was a glaze
d expression on the woman’s face, but I persevered.
‘It was like this glimpse into the brain of a three-year-old. Poppy’s not that clear about the difference between what has happened and what will happen. Or at least she’s not clear about it in her language.’
Now there was a long pause. Kelly Jordan’s eyes were almost closed, like she was doing a complicated mental calculation. Finally she shook her head.
‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘What problem does that solve? Are you saying that your daughter is some kind of clairvoyant?’
‘No, no, not at all. Poppy’s picture scared me and she was obviously scared herself in some way. And still is. But I couldn’t work out what exactly it was a picture of. But now I think I’ve got an idea. Poppy heard someone saying, I’ll push you over the balcony. Future tense. Poppy drew the picture. And then a few days later they did push the woman off the balcony.’
‘They?’
‘He. Her. It must be a he, mustn’t it? He threatened to do it and then he did it.’
‘That’s an awful lot to extract from a little news story that says nothing about a third party. It just says she was found at the bottom of the block of flats. She may have fallen. She may have jumped. It doesn’t even give her name.’
‘I came in before and you said that there was no crime to investigate. Now there’s this. If a woman is found at the bottom of a block of flats then surely there’s some kind of police investigation, isn’t there?’
Kelly Jordan drummed lightly on the desktop with her fingers.
‘How’s your daughter doing?’ she said.
‘Not well. She’s sleeping badly. She’s behaving strangely. She’s rough with her friends and clingy with me.’
‘I know it’s not my place to say, Tess, but maybe you’d be better thinking about your daughter than looking around for a crime that doesn’t exist.’
‘You’re right. It’s not your place to say. It’s your place to investigate crimes when people like me report them.’
‘Careful,’ said Kelly in a sharper tone. ‘Most of my colleagues would have thrown you out the first time and not seen you at all today. Remember that when you come in here and tell me how to do my job.’
