Chapter 8
What was he doing here? Dexter listened to the sounds of the coffee machine bubbling and hissing in the kitchen. God only knew what the girl must be thinking. But he’d needed to get away, to escape, and some instinct had propelled him down the M4 to Briarwood. No, not some instinct; he knew why he’d come here. Dammit, what was going on with his eyes? He hadn’t cried since he was a kid, had forgotten how it felt.
Dexter sat down on the chair with his jacket hanging over the back of it and reached into the left-hand pocket. As he pulled out the handkerchief, something else came with it.
He turned the object over and held it in the icy palm of his hand. When had he bought it? Just before Christmas. An antique rose-gold frog on a shovel, roughly one centimetre in length, designed to be worn on a charm bracelet. After an extremely good lunch at the Savoy, he’d been on his way through the Burlington Arcade when it had somehow managed to catch his eye in a jeweller’s window when he’d stopped to glance at the Patek Philippe watches on the next shelf up. Christmas was almost upon them and he hadn’t done anything about presents yet. But the frog on the shovel charm was quirky, there was something about the frog’s expression that appealed to him, and Laura had a charm bracelet she liked to wear on special occasions. He’d gone into the shop and bought it for her. Not many girls would prefer a frog on a shovel to something flashy with diamonds but he’d known she would.
And he’d been right. When Laura had opened the jeweller’s box on Christmas morning she’d been overjoyed . . . until he’d realised the charm bracelet she was wearing wasn’t gold, it was silver.
‘But it doesn’t matter,’ Laura had protested, laughing at the expression on his face. ‘I still love it! Look, mix and match.’ She’d held the gold frog charm up to the silver bracelet jangling on her wrist. ‘He’s fab!’
‘You can’t.’ He couldn’t believe he’d made the mistake. ‘It’d look stupid. I’ll get you a silver one instead.’
‘Dex, you wouldn’t be able to, this is Victorian or something. It’s old.’
No one was more stubborn than Laura. There was only one way to stop her wearing a gold charm on a silver bracelet. ‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ Dex lied, ‘because they had an identical charm at the shop in silver. So I’ll get that one for you instead.’
OK, maybe he was stubborn too.
‘Really?’ Delighted with this solution, Laura had promptly handed the gold charm over to him. ‘In that case, fantastic. You can take this one back and do a swap.’
And Dex, equally delighted to have won, had made a mental note to find a silversmith or jewellery designer from somewhere. After all, how hard could it be to replicate something like that? It might not be Victorian but Laura wouldn’t mind once she had it. In fact, if he didn’t tell her, she’d never know.
Except he hadn’t got around to organising it, had he, and now she never would. Because he’d been too occupied, it had slipped his mind, there had been too many other distractions in his busy, busy life . . .
OK, stop, don’t think about it.
And now the girl was on her way back with the coffee, which no longer seemed like such a good idea. Shoving the charm back into his jacket pocket, Dex hurriedly wiped his eyes with the handkerchief. All very well trying not to think about it but his brain didn’t have an Off switch.
‘Thanks.’ He took the coffee with trembling hands and instantly spilled some on the floor. Bending down to mop up the splashes with his handkerchief, he managed to spill some more.
‘Leave it. Doesn’t matter. Just drink your coffee,’ said the girl. ‘You look as if you need it.’
‘You’re Molly, right?’ The name belatedly came back to him.
‘I didn’t think you’d remember.’
Well, that made a change. Dex said, ‘We used to have a goldfish called Molly.’
‘In many ways, I’m quite like a goldfish.’
‘I drove down this evening. Forgot there wasn’t anything in the house. Well, except the remains of a bottle of Scotch. So I finished that off. Then realised I couldn’t drive anywhere to stock up on food and drink.’ Dex shook his head. ‘What this place needs is an all-night garage.’
‘You’re not in the big city now.’
‘Clearly. How far would I have to go to find a shop that’s open?’
Molly shrugged. ‘A few miles.’
‘Could you drive me there? I’d pay you. We can go in my car.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got stuff at home. I’ll give you whatever you need for tonight, then tomorrow you can drive there yourself.’ She paused. ‘Or if you’re not up to it, I can go.’
‘I don’t know. I can’t think. My head’s just . . . full.’ She was being kind to him, he realised, without even knowing what was wrong.
‘It’s OK, not a problem. Decide tomorrow.’
Touched by her thoughtfulness, Dex heard himself blurt out, ‘My sister died last night.’
‘Oh no, that’s awful.’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Dex nodded, unable to speak. For the first time in his adult life, he wished she would wrap her arms around him and give him a non-sexual hug.
Laura had been twelve years older than him, and following the death of their parents she had become like a mother to him. This was like losing them all over again. And OK, he was twenty-eight and a proper adult now, but it almost felt worse.
Molly-the-neighbour wasn’t going to give him a hug. He couldn’t ask for one.
‘Had she been ill for a long time?’ Her question was delicately phrased. ‘Or was it sudden?’
‘Sudden. I spoke to her on the phone yesterday morning and she was fine. She collapsed in the street yesterday afternoon. Just outside her local bank. It was a brain haemorrhage, apparently. By the time the ambulance got her to the hospital she was gone.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The girl was gazing at him in horror. ‘Such a terrible thing to happen. No wonder you’re in shock. Hang on.’ She disappeared, returning seconds later with a loo roll. Tearing off a metre of paper, she handed it to him. ‘Here, you can cry as much as you want. Just let it all out. There’s nothing worse than trying to hold it back.’
But his eyes were now aching and dry. Dex distractedly raked his fingers through his hair and took another gulp of coffee. If only he could stop imagining the scene outside the bank: Laura falling to the ground, concerned onlookers closing around her, unconcerned commuters hurrying past, the abandoned pushchair gathering momentum until it toppled off the pavement into the busy road—
‘How old was she?’ The girl’s voice dragged him back to the present. ‘Younger than you?’
She didn’t know.
‘Older,’ said Dex. ‘You saw her last week. Laura.’
Realisation dawned, and with it renewed dismay. ‘That was her? With the baby? My God . . .’
‘I know.’
‘Any other children?’
‘No.’
‘Her poor husband . . . partner . . .’
‘Neither, it was just the two of them. Her and Delphi.’
She closed her eyes at this fresh horror. ‘Oh, poor darling, poor baby. I only saw her from a distance. How old is she . . . six months?’
‘Eight.’ His throat was tightening again at the thought of Delphi growing up without a mother; it looked like the balled-up length of loo roll was going to come in useful after all. ‘Eight months old. She was in her pushchair when it happened. It rolled off the edge of the pavement and someone just managed to grab it in time before it went under a lorry. It’s a miracle she didn’t die too. I wasn’t there,’ Dex explained. ‘Someone told the paramedics.’
‘I don’t know what to say.’ The girl’s expression was stricken. He’d forgotten her name again . . . goldfish . . . Molly.
‘Me neither.’
‘If it happened that fast, at least she didn’t suffer.’ She saw the look on Dex’s face and said helplessly, ‘I know, I’m sorry. Maybe one day it’ll
be a comfort.’
‘Maybe. I suppose.’ There was a sudden noise on the other side of the wall and he flinched. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s my friend’s living room. This is her café. If she knows I’m still here, she might come in.’ Molly rose to her feet and took his almost empty mug from him. ‘Shall we go?’
Dex lifted his jacket off the back of the chair and Molly reached for the unglamorous but deeply practical Barbour beneath it. She locked up the café and together they made their way through the village, past the Saucy Swan. The rain intensified as they crossed the elongated green; in no time at all he was drenched again, but it was so irrelevant, so unimportant, he barely noticed.
Laura was dead. How could Laura be dead? It wasn’t possible. Head down, Dex carried on putting one foot in front of the other, scarcely aware of the girl alongside him.
What am I going to do?
Chapter 9
‘Come on, let’s get you some food.’ Realising he was functioning on autopilot, Molly took out her keys and led Dexter up the path to her house.
In the kitchen she found him a packet of Kettle chips, half a tin of assorted biscuits, a jar of coffee and a carton of UHT milk perilously close to its use-by date. She poured sugar into a spare cup, chose a couple of the less wrinkly apples from the fruit bowl and said, ‘How about bread and cereal? I’ve got white sliced or brown with seedy bits in, and some Crunchy Nut Cornflakes if you want them. Or there’s sausages in the freezer.’
She was overcompensating horribly, she knew that, like the kind of awful bossy team leader no one wanted to have around.
Dexter briefly shook his head. ‘Just stuff to make coffee, thanks.’
‘Sorry, I’m trying to help and I don’t know how.’ Molly threw the pack of Porkinsons back into the freezer.
‘Me neither. Actually I do. Got any wine?’
Molly pulled a face. Last week she’d won a bottle in the pub raffle, made by Lois’s dad. But it was a murky brew and she couldn’t inflict it on him.
‘I don’t think you’d like it. Homemade parsnip. But I’ve got some sherry left over from Christmas. Oh, and some dark rum too. Any good?’
Dexter nodded. ‘It’ll do.’
Basically, anything would do. Molly found a carrier bag and began loading everything into it, expecting Dex to take the bag and leave. Instead he unscrewed the top of the bottle of dark rum and said, ‘What goes with this? I’ve never had it before.’
‘Me neither. I just put it in stuff when I’m cooking. Rum and Coke, I suppose.’
‘Got any Coke?’
Molly took two cans out of the fridge and handed them to him. When he carried on standing there she said, ‘Do you want to go back to your place or stay here?’
‘I think I’d rather stay here,’ said Dex. ‘For a bit, at least. Is that OK with you?’
She had a comic strip to finish but some things were more important. This counted as extenuating circumstances. It was shocking enough to think that the woman who had so cheerfully announced she wasn’t a burglar was no longer alive. Her brother was here in the depths of grief. ‘Of course it’s OK.’ She found two glasses for them to drink from. ‘Come on, let’s go and sit down.’
‘I was just there, at this stupid party in Notting Hill with two girls hissing at each other like cats. Over me. I was drinking champagne.’ Dexter shook his head at the memory. Now that he’d started, he was discovering he couldn’t stop. ‘Having a good time. It was just . . . you know, entertaining to see these girls getting so worked up. Ridiculous, but kind of amusing too. And it didn’t even matter, because I didn’t particularly like either of them anyway. When my phone started to ring I just thought it would be a brilliant excuse to get myself out of the situation. I was glad it had rung. So I answered it, all ready to use whoever it was as a reason to leave . . . and I’d tell them all about it later, turn it into a funny story, you know? Like I always do. But it wasn’t a funny story.’ He stopped abruptly, took another swallow of rum and Coke and shuddered at the memory. ‘It was the police.’
Then he started talking about Laura when they’d been growing up. So many stories, some of which he hadn’t even thought about in years. Like the time she’d tripped while giving him a piggyback and he’d gone sailing over her head like a jockey. The time she’d put him in a cardboard box and sent him tobogganing downstairs, resulting in him losing a tooth well before it had been ready to be lost. The time she’d been sunbathing on a rug in the garden and he’d ridden his bike over her outstretched hand, breaking two of her fingers.
‘So it was a pretty violent relationship.’ The way Molly said it made him smile.
‘Not always. I drove her mad in other ways too. When I was about five I collected a jarful of dead insects from the garage and emptied them in her bed. And she hated mustard, so I used to secretly smear some in her sandwiches.’
‘You were the naughty little brother. I bet you were a nightmare when she brought boyfriends home.’
Dexter laughed, taken by surprise by a memory he’d completely forgotten about. ‘I was. There was one boy . . . the two of them were on the sofa watching TV and I was hiding behind the curtains. For ages. Then they started kissing. I waited and waited, and then I yelled out, “Laura Yates, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” Ha, you should have seen them. I was so proud of myself. Funnily enough, we never did see that boyfriend again.’ Ambushed by a fresh wave of grief, he stopped talking and finished his drink. ‘Oh God, I can’t believe she isn’t here any more. I just don’t know where she’s gone.’
The next time he looked at his watch another hour had passed and the rum bottle was empty. They’d finished the rest of the sherry too. Molly, curled up in the armchair on the other side of the fireplace, was still apparently paying attention.
‘Look at you, still listening. Good for you.’ Dex held out his empty glass. ‘Can’t be much fun having to sit there and put up with me droning on.’
‘Don’t worry, this is what neighbours are for. What do you want me to do with that glass?’
‘Fill it with something.’
‘There isn’t anything else. Apart from some weird Greek liqueur. We’ve drunk the house dry.’
Dex waggled the glass at her. ‘Weird Greek liqueur it is then.’
‘It smells like bonfires and paint-stripper. No one’s ever been brave enough to drink it. Why don’t I make you another coffee instead?’
‘No. Just humour me.’ He needed to sleep and he knew it wouldn’t happen unless he knocked himself out. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn into a monster. But I’ll buy it off you if you want. Take it next door.’
‘You don’t have to do that.’ Unfolding her legs, she padded in her fluffy socks through to the kitchen and returned with the bottle.
‘Thanks.’ It definitely looked dodgy but Dex didn’t care. Taking it from her, he poured himself half a glass.
‘You should really eat something. I could do cheese on toast.’
He shook his head. ‘Not hungry.’
‘OK, you’ve talked a lot about Laura. But there’s one thing you haven’t mentioned.’ The way Molly was looking at him made Dex not want to listen. He knew what she was going to say next.
‘One time when I was about ten I left stink bombs in her shoes so they’d burst when she put her feet in them. That was just as she was heading off out on another date. It’s actually a miracle I have any teeth left.’ He stared distractedly into the fire and took a huge gulp of liqueur without thinking. Jesus . . .
Molly waited until he’d finished coughing. Then she said, ‘What’s going to happen to the baby?’
There it was. That was the question he’d been avoiding thinking about. Dex coughed some more.
‘Where is she?’ Her gaze was unwavering.
‘Who?’
‘You know who. Delphi.’
‘She’s safe. She isn’t lying alone in an empty house, if that’s what you mean. Someone’s looking after her.’
‘Good.
Who?’
God, she was like an Exocet missile. ‘Why are you asking that question?’
‘Because you’re looking so defensive.’
‘Can we change the subject? I don’t want to talk about this now.’
‘I think you should. Look, I’m practically a stranger. We don’t know each other. Where is Delphi?’
‘With a foster family.’ He hated even having to say the words. ‘Someone arranged it at the hospital before I got there. They have emergency foster carers for . . . situations like this.’
Molly was nodding. ‘Right. And who’s going to be taking care of her after that?’
This was it, this was the question he didn’t want to answer. But it wasn’t going to go away.
‘I don’t know.’ Dex briefly closed his eyes.
‘What about the father?’
‘Off the scene. It was just a fling. She never told him she was pregnant.’
‘And your parents are both dead.’ He’d mentioned it earlier when he’d been telling her about Laura. Molly said, ‘But she must have thought about what she’d do if the worst happened. People make plans. Who are her friends, do you know them? Maybe she asked one of them to look after Delphi.’
Dexter shook his head. ‘She didn’t.’
‘Well, did she make a will?’
‘Yes.’ He exhaled slowly. ‘She made a will.’
‘So it’ll be in there.’
He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Do you know what it says?’
He avoided her gaze.
‘Oh God,’ said Molly. ‘It’s you, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ He sank his head into his hands. ‘She asked me to sign this document saying I’d be the guardian, but I only did it because I thought it wouldn’t happen. You say you’ll do these things but you never expect to actually have to.’ There, he’d said it now. It was out.
‘So you don’t really want to do it.’
Her tone wasn’t judgemental, but he felt judged anyway. Dexter said heavily, ‘It’s not a question of if I want to do it. I just can’t.’
‘No?’
‘No! I mean, God, how could I?’
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