First Aid
Page 17
‘Great view of the Channel,’ said Trevor.
‘I know we haven’t come for the ride,’ she said. ‘No need to go on about it. It’s good of you to drive me round scenic Kent. Especially as it’s pointless.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I do it myself all the time. Lose things and look for them.’
He turned the radio on and stuck his elbow out of the window.
She had asked Trevor to take her to Felpo’s old address in Folkestone. She had told him that Felpo had gone. Sorry to hear that, he’d said. She had knocked at the house while Trevor waited outside in the car on a double yellow line. A man had opened the door to her. She had stood on the step and Trevor had kept an eye. That’s how he put it. The man had scratched his chest. He’d never heard of anyone called Felpo. Where’s he from, then, he said. A woman from the restaurant next door had come out and emptied a bucket of hot dirty water into the gutter. Then, when Jo got back into the car, she had asked Trevor to drive round the country lanes for a while. He didn’t mention Ella camping in the shop and she didn’t say anything about the thin discoloured line down her face.
‘Anything else the matter?’ he said.
Jo shook her head in a vague way. Then she said, ‘I met my neighbour, Megan, on the way out. She asked where the van was. She looked so pleased when I said it wouldn’t be coming back.’
Trevor nodded. ‘Sounds normal,’ he said.
‘She’s obviously spent the last six months hoping that it would go. I hadn’t realised she hated it so much,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t have wanted an accident, just a failed MOT – something like that.’
She stared at the sea. He was being patient with her.
‘Do you often just sit in the car?’ she said. ‘You look as if you do.’
‘Like the Thermos mob on the front?’ he said. ‘Yes, I suppose I do. It passes the time. Lois didn’t lose things. A place for everything. She had rules.’
‘You didn’t stick to them,’ Jo said.
‘Nothing from the shop out on the pavement. That would have been like taking your clothes off in the street. She was right. You get the stuff outside, it looks pretty rough.’
About a month ago, it must have been, on an evening like this, they had moved three chairs into the sun and set out a trestle table with the items of junk which could stand light falling on them. They had sat there, the three of them, watching the world go by. Well, cars anyway and dogs. Annie had swept the pavement with the broom. She liked doing that. They hadn’t sold anything. Trevor would probably remember it too, but he wouldn’t mention it. He’d think she was brassed-off enough.
‘Did you see Ella on Thursday evening?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Did she tell you? We went for a nice walk. I was flattered she was prepared to put up with me. Boring old fellow like me.’
‘I don’t suppose you happened to notice Felpo’s van anywhere nearby, did you?’ she said. It seemed the simplest way to ask directly.
He looked puzzled. ‘No, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there,’ he said.
He started to tell her about someone called Frankie, but Jo was barely listening. She was telling herself that if Felpo had known Ella had lied, he would have stayed. She recognised it as one of those bargains made between two fools. Hope based on an alternative in the past, which hadn’t happened. Sweet nothing. Ella’s idea of reparation was to cause trouble – then to carry on living. It had to do with her age. She’d done what she could. She remembered Ella standing against the window in the kitchen. She supposed someone might mistake them for each other from the back.
‘I got the stuff from Ena Tiemann,’ Trevor said. ‘It’s in boxes in the back. She’s breaking out. Decided to part with all the heirlooms she wrapped up and put away when her mother died. She says she needs the space.’
‘What for?’ Jo said.
‘I didn’t ask her. They do that sometimes. Clear the decks. The only freedom left, turning out a cupboard,’ he said.
‘Let’s not think about it,’ she said.
‘She bought a new blouse too. Swallowed the spare buttons. Said she remembered thinking they looked like little white pills in their nice plastic packet and the next thing she knew she’d taken them with water.’
‘Was that before or after she turned the cupboard out?’ Jo said.
‘Before, I think.’
‘I might try it,’ Jo said.
‘September tomorrow,’ Trevor said.
‘Yes,’ Jo said. ‘It is.’
She thought of Ena Tiemann sitting in her chair waiting for the carer to arrive to put her to bed. She wouldn’t know what she was waiting for, nor, for the time being, where she was. From the clouds of her mind, household items would emerge – plates with green and gold rims, a dish in the shape of a lettuce leaf, a fruit bowl with blue dragons chasing round it, a photograph of a girl dressed up as a princess, waving at the camera. She wouldn’t know why she was thinking of them.
‘We could see what’s in the box,’ Trevor said. ‘Shall we? It’s all in newspaper. Find out the weather forecast forty years ago.’
‘All right,’ she said.
A woman came round the side of the coastguard station and steadied herself on the near wall. She had been running, for exercise, and was catching her breath. Her eyes, over-focused by exertion, fixed on them. Jo knew that the woman wasn’t actually seeing, but she was relieved that they hadn’t already got out in the open and started unwrapping the Apostle spoons. Although the windows on either side of the car were open, she was hidden by the reflections on the chalky glass to the front.
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