The Unheard

by Nicci French

  ‘Sod the time. Let’s have another coffee and you can tell me properly.’

  ‘I can’t.’ I stood up. ‘I’ve got to catch a train. I’m off to Chelmsford.’

  ‘Chelmsford? What’s in Chelmsford?’

  ‘A friend of a friend.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Peggy Nolan opened the door before I even had time to knock. I wondered if she’d been standing at the window, watching for me. She was wearing a green jumpsuit that was missing a couple of buttons and had a checked scarf tied round her head. She held out her hands and I took them in mine: thin fingers, chipped nails, tiny grains of mascara embedded in the skin round her eyes, a cold sore on the side of her mouth. She looked a bit grubby, a bit starved.

  She took me straight through her house to the garden at the back. I could see why. The house – a short taxi ride from the station – was a tiny two up, two down in a suburban street that could have been anywhere in England and it was crammed with objects: shoes piled up in the hall, posters on the walls, mobiles and wind chimes and dream catchers hanging from the kitchen ceiling, dozens of jugs on the windowsill, three clocks, only one of which was working, a guitar leaning against the wall with a string broken. But the garden was different. It fell slightly away from the house down to a second level and then beyond that looked across woodland. Peggy had made the garden her own and it was lushly green, brimming with flowers and, at the end, there was a neatly tended vegetable patch.

  ‘If it wasn’t for this, I would have gone mad years ago,’ she said. ‘Maybe I did go mad for a while. I’d be at the checkout at the supermarket and the person would ask how I was and I would tell them what was happening to my daughter, how she was running wild or breaking down or whatever she was doing at that particular point, and after a few moments I would see in their eyes that they were embarrassed and they just wanted me to stop and go away. The one thing that comforted me was this.’ She gestured around her. ‘I used to want to live in a commune and we’d all dig the land and feed ourselves off it and weave things and bake bread. Then Skye came along and… oh well. That was just a stupid dream. Probably it would never have happened anyway.’ She looked more closely at me. ‘Are you a mother?’

  ‘I’ve got a three-year-old daughter.’

  ‘Look after her,’ said Peggy. ‘Hold her close.’

  ‘I try to.’

  ‘I want to talk about Skye. It’s all I want. The only time I feel a bit better is when I’m talking about her; then she doesn’t seem so far away. It doesn’t seem like I’ll never see her again.’ There was a rising sob in her voice. ‘That’s why I was happy you wanted to come out here to see me. But if I talk too much, just shut me up.’

  ‘I want you to talk as much as you need.’

  ‘Shall we have tea out here? I think it’s warm enough.’

  ‘I’d like that very much.’

  I sat on a slightly wobbly metal garden chair on the paving just next to the house. After a few minutes, Peggy emerged, carrying a tray

  ‘I made a carrot cake,’ she said. ‘It’s vegan. Can I cut you a slice? It might be a bit heavy.’

  ‘Just a thin piece.’

  Before pouring the tea she took a small square flat piece of pottery, glowing amber and green, and placed it in front of me.

  ‘It’s a coaster,’ she said. ‘It’s to put the hot mug on.’

  I picked it up and examined it. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘I made it. I do pottery. I used to have a fantasy of doing it as a job. But it gives me pleasure.’

  ‘It’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Please, take it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have it. It would make me so happy to know that it was owned by someone who liked it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Go on, put it in your pocket.’

  I laughed. ‘That’s incredibly kind. I’ll put my mug of tea on it first.’

  As I drank the tea, Peggy talked about what Skye had been like as a child, how happy and impulsive, with intense and volatile friendships, and subject to violent enthusiasms, usually to do with the natural world: pressing wild flowers, volunteering at an animal sanctuary, learning to identify birds. But something had gone wrong when she was a teenager and Peggy had often wondered whether it was to do with not having a father around.

  ‘It was me and Skye,’ she said. ‘Our safe little world. I thought I could protect her.’

  I repressed a shudder at that. ‘You don’t know how children will react.’

  ‘I kept thinking it would just be a phase,’ said Peggy. She was looking past me at something beyond. She could have been talking to anyone – or talking to herself. ‘She got involved with a group of people when she was about fourteen and it was horrible. I didn’t know what to do. There were drugs, of course, and she had a couple of boyfriends who treated her badly. It was like having a stranger in the house, a stranger who hated me. Sometimes she stole from me, and from my mother too. That was awful.

  ‘When she moved to London, it was like she was escaping. She only told me little bits about her life there but it worried me. When she met Charlie, it was like a miracle. But in the end he couldn’t save her. Nobody could.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Can I say something?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re talking as if your daughter killed herself. Or died of an overdose. She didn’t. Maybe she didn’t need saving. Maybe she would have saved herself or was in the process of saving herself. She just had the terrible luck to run into the wrong person.’

  Peggy shook her head slowly. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t get it. When she and Charlie broke up – when he left her, I should say – she was heartbroken. You’ve never seen such despair. Skye never did things by halves. When she was happy, she was so happy it was almost frightening. And when she was sad – oh my, she was sad, like the whole world had ended. The truth is, when she cut herself off from me, I was—’

  She stopped, putting up a hand to shield her face from the sun. Her eyes were bloodshot. I waited.

  ‘I was relieved. That’s the truth. It had all gone on too long. I didn’t want to think about her. I didn’t want to know, day by day, how she was going off the rails. I didn’t want to know about the drugs. Or the men. I didn’t want to be responsible. I’d spent so many years in dread, panic in the pit of my stomach every single day. So I was relieved she didn’t want to see me.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t mean you didn’t love her. Did she say why?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’ Peggy was speaking quickly now, trying to keep ahead of her sobs. ‘I don’t think it was a decision. She just stopped coming home to visit, or calling, and didn’t answer my texts or anything. Maybe it was because I reminded her of the life she wanted to get away from, or maybe she was ashamed. I don’t know. But I do know that I didn’t really try very hard to keep in touch with her or find out how she was. I told myself that if she wasn’t contacting me that was good. No news is good news, that’s what they say. But sometimes no news is terrible news. My little girl. Murdered.’ Her voice shook. ‘I should have known. I should have insisted. That’s what a good mother would have done. So I blame myself. I’ll always blame myself. And I don’t know how to bear it. I literally don’t know how.’

  I put my hand over hers. It felt like a claw.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry. I can’t begin to imagine what it feels like.’

  We sat together in silence. A blackbird whistled from the garden wall.

  ‘Have the police told you what’s happening with their investigation?’ I asked at last.

  ‘They haven’t told me anything. A young police officer came round and sat where you’re sitting and asked me if I was feeling all right. I don’t need the police to give me therapy. I’m already seeing a therapist. And I do yoga and meditate. I just want them to find who did it.’

  ‘Didn’t they interview you?’

  ‘I couldn’t
tell them much. They wanted to ask me about the people she’d been seeing, but I didn’t know who she spent her time with.’

  ‘Didn’t she stay in touch with any old friends?’

  Peggy took a long time to reply.

  ‘I think mainly she left all that behind when she moved to London. I think she may have seen one or two who also moved down there.’

  ‘Do you know their names?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I wanted to talk to someone who knew her in London.’

  ‘There’s one I always liked, a girl called Hannah.’

  ‘Do you know her second name?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Hannah…’ She hesitated. ‘Flood. Hannah Flood. She was good with her hands. She used to have a market stall selling candles and things like that, beautiful things, and I think she opened a shop in London.’

  ‘Do you know where?’

  ‘Marylebone, I think. Just off the high street. But I don’t know whether she was in touch with Skye. I haven’t seen her for ages and I hadn’t seen Skye for a long time either. When I went to her flat last week, it was the first time I’d been there for almost a year.’

  I felt a prickle of interest. ‘Why did you go?’

  ‘To clear it out. I’m her next of kin.’ She sniffed. ‘It was just a couple of years ago that I cleared my mother’s house out when she died. I’m only forty-five.’ She gave a laugh that sounded like a sob. ‘I always thought I was too young to be the mother of a grown-up. Now I feel about a hundred years old and probably look it.’ She rubbed her thin hands over her face as if to wipe away the lines of grief. ‘But it made me think of my own house and what it would be like for Skye to deal with all my old clothes and things in drawers I should have thrown away years ago. I never thought I’d be the one to do it for Skye.’

  She took a tissue out and blew her nose.

  ‘That must have been so painful.’

  Peggy shook her head. ‘It was helpful in a way. We can’t have the funeral yet, and anyway that will probably be awful, but going through everything in the flat felt right somehow. It was a way of saying goodbye to her. This sounds stupid, but it felt like I was taking care of her. Taking care of her like I didn’t when she was alive. Folding up her clothes and putting things in order. She lived in such disorder.’ Tears were rolling down her thin cheeks and she made no attempt to check them. ‘I’m not exactly tidy myself; I’m a magpie, I like collecting stuff. But Skye made a mess wherever she went; her whole life was a mess. Charlie went down with me and we went through it all together. I don’t know how I would have managed this without him. It was mostly rubbish, of course. It felt strange putting her knives and forks and dustpan and brush and tea towels into cardboard boxes. We should probably have taken them straight to the dump, but I couldn’t bear to. She had some nice clothes. She looked so pretty in them. I don’t know what to do with those. I don’t think I can bear to get rid of them. What do you think?’

  ‘I think you shouldn’t make decisions about anything like that at the moment.’

  ‘That’s what Charlie says too.’ She paused. ‘But there was something. Would you like to see it?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Peggy got up and walked into the house and while she was away I thought about Charlie, the devoted ex-boyfriend, the keeper of the flame.

  I remembered looking at the list of murdered women in London. It was a very small sample but even so, the perpetrators were mainly the husbands and ex-husbands, the partners and ex-partners and people who wanted to be partners. Charlie, the ex-boyfriend, must surely be the first on the police’s list of suspects. And he had gone round with Peggy, helping her clear out the flat. It was something to think about. But how did Charlie and Skye connect to me and Poppy?

  Then I had another thought. What if I died? Would Jason, as Poppy’s father, be allowed to help ‘clear out’ my flat? Was he still some kind of next of kin? I would have to check up on that. The thought of it made me almost physically sick.

  Peggy came back out into the garden holding a shoebox. She placed it on the table and took the top off.

  ‘This was the most emotional part for me,’ she said. ‘This was Skye’s jewellery. Sometimes I just pick up one of her sweaters and I can still smell her perfume on it. But more often I go through these, looking at her earrings and the necklaces.’ She picked out a silver flower on a thin chain. ‘I got her this for her twenty-first birthday. It’s nothing valuable, but I found it in a second-hand shop and thought it would suit her.’

  I felt such sadness, looking through these intimate possessions of a woman I had only met once. I picked up a copper bracelet, a clutch of thin bangles, an anklet with tiny charms hanging from it, a pretty moonstone necklace, some large hooped earrings and some other smaller ones, several studs, a brooch in the shape of a fish, a handful of tortoiseshell hair slides, a delicate floral headband. I pictured Skye standing in front of a mirror in her disordered room, trying things on, studying herself, preparing herself for the world, and then I let the jewellery pour through my latticed fingers, back into the box.

  As I did so, I felt a sudden puzzlement and turned to Peggy, but Peggy’s pinched and tear-stained face made me pause so I didn’t ask.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  On the train back to London, Peggy’s coaster in my pocket, the events of the day swarmed through me till my head ached. I thought of Skye’s sad, short life, but I also thought of my own life. The story I had told myself had been scribbled over and ripped up. Firm ground was now quicksand. My own sense of who I was and what I meant had been dislocated.

  A man walked through the carriage and, although there were several empty seats, he sat opposite me, spreading his legs, occupying space. He was fleshy, with brawny arms and jowly cheeks, and he let his gaze linger on me. I looked away, feeling queasy. Men, all men, had become figures of dread and menace. I had been so focused on Jason, but what about Ben, there in Jason’s house with his mean dog and his sad eyes and his pallid, slack face? What about Laurie, who I hadn’t even considered until now, although he had been in plain sight all along? Or Bernie, who always seemed to be around, meeting us in the hall, staring down at us from his window as we sat in the garden, bringing round bread, being a good neighbour? And of course, there was Aidan, who had been in my actual flat as much as anyone. Not anymore, of course. Men with dogs and men without dogs. And now there was Charlie, who had no connection to me, so far as I knew, but was deeply connected to Skye.

  Who was I meant to be suspicious of? Who was I meant not to be suspicious of?

  I couldn’t wait; it felt as if every second counted. I phoned Kelly Jordan.

  ‘I’m very busy,’ she said instead of hello.

  I stood up and walked to the place between compartments so that the man wouldn’t be able to hear me.

  ‘You said I should get in touch if I had any concerns.’

  ‘What are your concerns?’

  ‘As far as I understand, the basic police theory is that Skye Nolan was killed as part of a robbery that went wrong.’

  ‘It’s one possibility.’

  ‘If it was a robbery, then why wasn’t her jewellery taken?’

  There was a pause. I looked at my phone, wondering if I’d lost signal.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Skye’s mother showed me her jewellery box.’

  ‘Why did she do that?’

  ‘She invited me to her house.’

  ‘How do you even know her?’

  ‘I met her at the inquest. Remember? I told you I was going.’ There was a silence on the line. ‘It’s open to the public.’

  ‘I know it’s open to the public, Tess. Lots of places are open to the public. But talking to witnesses – you could even call it interfering with witnesses – is not…’ There was another pause. ‘Not something you should be doing.’

  ‘I just wanted to offer my condolences and she wanted to talk to me. I think that’s all right. But what abou
t the jewellery?’

  ‘I don’t have to explain the police investigation to you.’

  ‘I know. I just wanted to inform you in case it changed your mind.’

  ‘All right, Tess, in this case the jewellery was found scattered on the floor. Presumably by the murderer.’

  ‘But why wasn’t it taken?’

  ‘Because we’re only seeing what was left. It looked as if the jewellery had been hastily tossed around as if someone had rummaged through it. Presumably more valuable items were taken.’

  ‘Peggy Nolan didn’t say anything was missing.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t know that Peggy Nolan had lost touch with her daughter over the past year. There is no reason she would have been able to identify missing pieces of jewellery.’

  ‘But you don’t know that any jewellery was stolen.’

  ‘That’s true. But it may have been or it may have been that nothing was stolen because nothing was worth stealing. Is that all?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job. I just want to be helpful.’

  I heard Jordan take a deep breath.

  ‘I need to warn you that this is a murder investigation.’

  ‘I’m just talking to people.’

  ‘You’re talking to Skye’s mother who is extremely vulnerable.’

  ‘I know that. Also—’ I took a deep, steadying breath, knowing that I might be about to make a neighbour into an enemy and also wreck my friendship with Gina. ‘There are other men I think you should take a look at.’

  ‘What other men?’

  ‘Other men who Poppy sees a lot of. Like our neighbour, Bernie, who lives in the flat upstairs, and then there’s the husband of a friend of mine who looks after Poppy after school several times a week. And I don’t know if you’ve thought of investigating Skye’s ex-boyfriend, Charlie. He seems distraught, but I’ve heard that—’

  ‘Tess.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can you hear yourself?’

  ‘That’s not the point. Do you hear me? Are you listening?’

  ‘I understand you are worried.’