But at last it was done and seemed literate and dignified. She put the letter in one envelope and the report in another, cleared her desk, told her secretary to take both envelopes to the chairman, touched up her make-up, combed her hair and left the building. If she hurried, she could catch the one o’clock train to Poppleton. There was nothing in her mind except the urgent need to get home, to be inside her own house, inside her own room with the door locked against the world. Hidden away. Safe.
The house was completely empty, for the cleaner only worked mornings and it was much too early for the girls to be home from school. But emptiness was what she needed. The order and stillness of it was like balm.
It took an effort to climb the stairs, an effort to walk across the landing and, once inside her bedroom, she locked the door and collapsed across the duvet as though she was fainting. But she didn’t cry. She lay quite still with her hands at her sides and thought and thought, dully and without hope. She’d come so far and worked so hard and now it was all dust and ashes in her mouth. She’d lost her job, just like everybody else. Her job, her status, her salary, her reason for existence. She was finished. All her patience and tact, all her hard-won education, all those hours and hours of work and effort had been a total waste of time. It couldn’t be true. Oh dear God, it couldn’t, couldn’t be true. If it was true, how could she ever face anyone again?
For a brief moment, she thought of Rob and wondered where he was and what he would say when he came home. My poor Rob! Then grief overwhelmed her again.
Her poor Rob had been hard at work all day in the gardens of the Alhambra Hotel, taking up the challenge of grounds that had been neglected for nearly a decade and were now little more than a wilderness.
The gardens lay so far below the road that, unless they had been guests at the hotel, very few people knew they were there. Once there had been paved terraces before the drawing-room windows, and wide herbaceous borders, and stretching to the furthest bounds, a grassy path that led between rose beds and ornamental herbs to a central sunken garden, bordered by low hedges and containing a round pond full of carp where a fountain played perpetually.
Now the borders were full of weeds, the roses overgrown and straggly, the soil sour, the hedges dead, the fountain chipped and dry and the pond full of dog-ends and empty cigarette packets. But this was just the sort of work Rob thoroughly enjoyed, out in the open, in air that had a breath of spring about it, resuscitating and restoring.
He and his team had walked and measured all morning. Now they were making a start, turning over the earth and digging in compost to feed it. Two of them were dismantling the fountain so that they could take it back to the garden centre and work on it under cover. The centrepiece was a winged cherub holding a conch shell and, under Rob’s orders, they were wrapping it in sacking to protect it on the journey.
‘Pack the wings with newspaper,’ he instructed. ‘We don’t want them to chip. Use plenty.’
But when they’d used all the paper they’d brought with them there was still a wing that wasn’t protected.
‘There’s a couple of papers in my coat pocket,’ Rob remembered. ‘Use them.’ This was an emergency. He could always buy another on the way home.
So the day’s news was put to good use and his father-in-law’s picture was folded round the cherub’s right wing.
‘Now what?’ the two boys wanted to know.
The tower of the Minster was a pale shape against the darkening sky and blackbirds were shouting at one another in the hawthorn hedges. Pip, pip, pip. But the light still held and there was no need for him to be home early. Sheryl was going to collect the girls.
‘We’ll go on,’ he decided. ‘Get as much done as we can. We’ll drain the pond and then it’ll be dry by Monday and we shall be able to see what sort of state it’s in.’
‘It’ll be cracked,’ one of his men predicted.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ he grinned. ‘Fortunately cracks can be mended. That’s what we’re here for.’
Chapter 31
‘She’s late!’ Helen Pengilly said disparagingly. ‘Look at her!’
The two girls had been waiting at the school gate for a whole minute and their new nanny had only just appeared, hurtling towards them on her battered old bike, pedalling frantically, her ginger hair streaming behind her.
She was in a dreadful hurry. ‘Come on,’ she said, breathlessly. ‘We’ve got five minutes.’
‘What for?’ Naomi asked.
‘To get home. I’ve got a date. Come on!’
Helen couldn’t see why they had to hurry because she had a date, but she was wasting her breath saying so. They had to run all the way home while she pushed her silly bicycle at a hundred miles an hour. By the time they turned into the drive Naomi was out of breath and tearful because her shoelaces had come undone and she hadn’t been allowed to stop and do them up again and Helen was scowling with fury. But their mother’s car was standing in the drive, so that was all right. Ever so badly parked, though.
Sheryl whisked them both into the kitchen where she skinned off their coats and ordered them to sit up at the table. Mummy wasn’t there and she didn’t come in to see them, which was odd. But Sheryl ran out into the hall and called up the stairs to tell her they were home.
‘Now your mother’s home so I’ll give you your tea and then I’ll be off,’ she said. She took two miserable-looking digestive biscuits out of the tin and gave them one each – one biscuit for tea! Then she made two mugs of cocoa before Helen could remind her that they didn’t like it.
‘There you are,’ she said. ‘You sit there and drink your cocoa and eat up your biscuits like good little girls. Mummy’ll be down presently. You’ll be all right, won’t you. I’m off then.’
After she’d gone, Helen and Naomi ate their biscuits like good little girls’ and sipped at their ‘nice cocoa’, even though they didn’t like it, but Mummy didn’t come downstairs and the odd feeling got worse.
Presently Naomi began to worry. ‘It’s ever so quiet,’ she whispered. It didn’t seem right to talk out loud when it was so quiet. ‘Do you think she’s all right?’
‘Yes. Course,’ Helen said. She spoke in her normal voice and firmly because whispering is babyish. But the house was quiet. Usually there was music playing when they got in or a washing machine whirring or a hoover or something. Now there wasn’t a sound. ‘I expect she’s in the shower.’
‘Let’s go and see, shall we,’ Naomi urged. So they tiptoed through the silent hall, hand in hand for comfort, and crept upstairs. The quiet made their skin prickle and there was worse to come. Their parents’ bedroom door was locked. They’d never known a door to be locked before. Ever. They both tried it twice, but it simply wouldn’t open and nobody came to open it for them. The silence lapped around them like ice-cold water and now they were both afraid.
‘Mummy!’ Helen called, but not too loud just in case it was the wrong thing to do. ‘Are you there?’
There was no answer, so she tried again, this time a little louder. ‘Mummy, are you all right?’
And at that, their mother’s voice answered in an echoing hollow way, as though she were at the end of a tunnel. ‘Go away.’
The girls looked at one another, their eyes rounded.
‘Is something the matter?’ Helen ventured.
The answer was really alarming. ‘Yes,’ their mother’s voice said. ‘There is. Go away, I don’t want anyone near me. Just go, do you hear me. Go away.’
‘Are you hurt?’ Helen asked.
‘No.’
‘Are you ill?’
That brought a tetchy answer. ‘No. No.’
‘Are you coming down to tea?’ Naomi asked.
‘No,’ their mother’s hollow voice called back. ‘I’m not coming down to tea, or dinner, or breakfast. I don’t think I shall ever go anywhere again. Oh please go away!’
There was no mistaking the anguish in her voice. The girls looked at one another, now thoroughly alarmed
.
‘Do you think she means it?’ Naomi asked. ‘What are we going to do?’
Helen knew the answer to that. ‘Phone Daddy,’ she said.
‘Do you know the number?’
‘It’s in my address book,’ Helen said, striding off to their bedroom to find it.
But dialling the number was one thing, talking to their father quite another. A strange voice answered them, in a laconic drawling sort of way. ‘Sorry,’ it said, ‘he’s not here. Not been here all day.’
‘Where is he?’ Helen asked, heart sinking.
‘Out on a job,’ the voice said. ‘Do you want him to phone you back?’
‘No,’ Helen said miserably, and she put the phone down and explained the situation to her sister. ‘He’s out on a job. They don’t know where he is.’
Out on a job was bad news. It meant that Daddy wouldn’t be home until very late.
‘Something awful’s going on, isn’t it, Helly?’ Naomi said. She was very near tears, her bottom lip trembling. ‘What are we going to do?’
Something awful was going on, but there was no point in speculating about it. Helen took command. ‘We’ll go to London,’ she said. ‘And tell Grandpa Quennell. He’ll know what to do.’
‘Why can’t we go and tell Grandma Pengilly?’ Naomi asked. Grandma Pengilly lived in York and that was much nearer than London.
‘Because she’s batty,’ Helen said. She was very fond of Grandma Pengilly but she wouldn’t be any good in a crisis, and this was a crisis.
‘But we haven’t got any money,’ Naomi wailed, tears beginning to fall. ‘How will we buy the tickets? And it’s miles to London. How will we know the way?’
‘We’ll use Mummy’s ticket, silly,’ Helen said. They always travelled on their mother’s ticket and she knew where it was. ‘Come on.’
Three minutes later they were on their way to Poppleton Station, wearing their padded jackets, their woolly hats and scarfs and carrying a bag full of necessities – a packet of chocolate biscuits, two cans of Coke, a Mars Bar and some chewing gum, two pairs of clean knickers, Naomi’s teddy bear, her colouring crayons and her birthday book, Helen’s silver bracelet, her purse with £4.54 in it, in case they needed something more to eat on the way, her new hairbrush that had never been used, an assortment of ribbons, their mother’s concessionary ticket and, as a last-minute afterthought because Naomi was taking her birthday book, Helen’s address book.
It was better when they were walking through the village. Naomi began to recover. They passed the school and waved to a group of their friends who were still hanging about by the gate, skirted the Lord Nelson pub and the White Horse pub and the church with the belfry, crossed the Green where they waved to Mrs O’Henry and set off on the walk down Station Road, which was miles and miles long and took them ages.
Just as they reached the level crossing, the barriers came down and the York train buzzed past, its yellow face gleaming in the half-light, its three maroon and cream coaches clearly labelled REGIONAL RAILWAYS and lots of passengers sitting like black silhouettes beside the windows. They had to run to catch it, and only just scrambled aboard before the double doors closed behind them. There was no time for doubt or hesitation. They were on their way.
It was an easy journey into York because it took only ten minutes and they’d done it plenty of times before. But York Station seemed huge and very noisy by contrast, especially to Naomi who grew weepy at the sight of it. Not that weeping did her any good. Helen said not to fuss and hauled her off to platform 1 where an absolutely enormous train was curved alongside the platform like a great dirty-white snake.
‘This is it,’ Helen said and pushed her sister into a first-class compartment, where there were maroon curtains at the windows and grey carpet all the way up the walls and little Formica tables set between seats, which Helen said would be very useful for eating things and writing.
‘We’ll have something to eat in a minute,’ she said. But rush and worry had given Naomi stomach ache.
‘That’s because you’re hungry,’ Helen said, quoting their father. ‘We’ll have half a Mars Bar when it gets started.’
But when the train finally did get started, it frightened them both so much that it put all thought of food right out of their heads. It went so fast that it leant over sideways like a rollercoaster ride and gave out an odd sort of smell like something burning, which seemed very peculiar to Naomi because she couldn’t remember the trains doing things like that when they’d been travelling with Mummy.
‘It’s not going to crash, is it?’ she asked.
‘Course not,’ Helen said. She spoke scathingly so as to quell her own fears. ‘These trains don’t crash.’
‘Gemma’s did.’
‘This one won’t.’
‘Will we be there soon?’
‘No. It takes two hours.’
‘Two hours!’
‘Look out of the window,’ Helen advised.
They were swishing through the great wide plains of the Ouse Valley, past fields lying dark and mysterious in the half-light and a Tesco’s lit up like a red-brick cathedral with rows and rows and rows of cars lined up in the car parks alongside it.
‘What if a ticket inspector comes?’ Naomi worried.
‘He will come,’ Helen said. ‘That’s all right. Leave him to me.’
But he didn’t turn up until they were pulling out of Doncaster and it was getting really dark and then he was suddenly beside them when they least expected him.
‘Travelling with your mother?’ he asked, as he glanced at their ticket.
Helen looked him straight in the eye. It’s always best to look people straight in the eye when you’re going to tell them lies. ‘That’s right,’ she said.
He’ll ask us where she is, Naomi thought, and what will we say then? We shall be found out and he’ll make us get off the train and how will we get back home?
But he didn’t. He simply returned the ticket and said ‘Have a nice day!’ And that was that.
It was such a relief that they had a Mars Bar and a can of Coke to celebrate. After that the journey was easy. They ate their chocolate biscuits and had another can of Coke and did some colouring in while the darkening countryside passed beyond the windows. Now and then they rushed through a town where orange lights glowed in long symmetrical rows and they could see cars and people in the streets. And once Naomi fell asleep and woke with a start as they pulled up at another station.
Then they were driving between rows of houses and there were lots of streets and ever such a lot of traffic and they passed a station called Haringay where there was an odd blue bridge and masses of trains going in both directions in a very bewildering way, not cream trains like the InterCity ones or cream and maroon like the Poppleton ones, but blue, white and red like the French flag. Helen said she thought they were in London but Naomi wasn’t sure because they’d just passed a long yellow notice on one of the buildings which said ‘York the largest lofts in London’ in big black letters. So perhaps they’d gone round in a circle and York would be the next stop.
But no, the next stop was King’s Cross. The guard said so and reminded them to take all their luggage with them.
‘There you are!’ Helen said, cramming the colouring book back in the bag. ‘We’re here!’
York station had been daunting but this was much, much worse. It was an absolutely enormous place and full of echoes that reverberated round and round inside your head like gongs playing. It had great tall columns everywhere made of yellow bricks and a glass roof curved like a huge glass frame and hundreds and hundreds of trains, pulling in and huffing out and making dreadful hissing noises. There were people pushing terrible trolleys, and people running, all in a hurry, jostling past them on enormous feet and swinging bags and briefcases in every direction. They walked off the platform, hand in hand and too overawed to speak, and dared themselves along a huge ramp on to a concourse full of people all striding about as if they knew where they were
going.
‘What are we going to do now?’ Naomi said, clinging to her sister.
‘We’re going to take a taxi,’ Helen said, speaking with splendid confidence, as if she’d been taking taxis all her life. ‘There’s a sign up there. See? With an arrow. If we follow that we shall find them. Look! There’s another one. Come on.’
So they followed the signs, clinging on to one another and both feeling very nervous. And they found the taxis. ‘There they are! I can see them through the door.’
There was a circular space just outside the door where the taxis followed one another round like horses in a circus ring while their passengers stood in a queue and shuffled forward to be taken on board. The two girls joined the line, small and quiet among the tall suits, blue jeans and bulky luggage of their fellow travellers. There were four young men in front of them and after a while two fat Americans joined the queue behind them, talking to one another in loud fat voices, and behind them there was an Arab lady in a sort of black tent with a black headscarf over her head and forehead and a mask made of leather covering every bit of her face except her eyes. If being in the middle of it all hadn’t been so terrifying, it would have been exciting.
The queue moved forward quickly. Before Naomi could worry about what they were going to say to the taxi driver when they got there, they were there and Helen was climbing in as though she was one of the grown-ups, saying ‘Putney’ to the driver, the way the young men had said ‘Tower Bridge.’ She’d watched them very closely.
The driver was a friendly man with a very wide face and a very wide smile. ‘What part a Putney, darlin’?’ he asked.
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