Finn is smiling in the picture: bike rides did that to him. He wasn’t a natural driver, jerky and ill at ease behind the wheel of his cumbersome grey Volvo, happier by far when he was whizzing along on two wheels. Daphne worried about him when he drove, never envisaging the horrible irony of his losing his life on a bicycle.
After he died she got her father to take away the Volvo, unable to bear the sight of it in the driveway. Do what you want with it, she told him. Just get it out of here. Finn’s blue bicycle she left in the shop, together with all the new ones: unable to part with it, but too sad to contemplate seeing it without him.
Would it have made any difference if he’d cycled home on it that day? They’ll never know. The inquest report was ambiguous, the bin-lorry driver’s assertion that Finn had swerved into the path of his vehicle to avoid a cat unable to be corroborated or ruled out. Accidental death, the chairperson of the jury called it. Nobody wanting him dead, but he’d died all the same.
She sets down the photo and gathers her things together. She locks up and walks down the alleyway to the yard where her red Beetle is parked and deposits her briefcase in the boot. Bridestone Avenue, according to her father – as good as Google Maps with all his driving – is located some two miles away, between the maternity hospital and the river. You’d be better off leaving the car in Larkin Crescent, just off Bridestone, he told her. As far as I remember, Bridestone is pretty narrow; parking could be tricky.
The streets are as busy as they were that morning, people already on the move for the weekend. Halfway to her destination Daphne realises she’s forgotten the first name of the man she’s going to meet. Something short, one syllable – Pat? Tim? John? As she turns onto Larkin Crescent, Tom Wallace pops abruptly into her head.
She drives slowly past neat houses, spots a small road off to the left. No cul-de-sac sign, but that must be it. She parks a little way beyond the turn and takes her briefcase from the back seat. Three minutes to four: she could hardly be more punctual.
She turns onto the narrow little road. Above her the sky is dark and heavy with cloud: rain on the way for sure. She remembers her umbrella, still presumably sitting in the boot of the car where she usually keeps it. She’s definitely not thinking straight today. No matter: the owner will be there to meet her. They always are.
He’s not there.
After her third press of the bell goes unanswered, she leans her briefcase against the door and walks up and down the short cement path, rubbing her hands together. She should have worn her coat this morning. The wind is picking up; she can almost smell the rain. She debates going back to the car for her umbrella, and decides to chance it. He won’t be long.
The minutes tick on. By a quarter past four she’s had a good look around the outside. There’s no back garden to speak of, just a metre-wide paved pathway between the house and a beautiful shoulder-high old stone wall that runs along the rear of the property.
A fairly well-tended shrubbery sits off to the side of the house: a young budding clematis making its way up the wall, a pair of dwarf apple trees covered with blossom, a bay and a lavender and what looks like a fuchsia, hard to tell with no flower coming yet. One or two other plants she can’t identify, a few clutches of bluebells nestling under a graceful Japanese maple tree at the far end.
A small garage lies to the right of the property, a new-looking padlock on the door.
Twenty past four – where is he? At this rate it’ll be well after five by the time she finishes: all she needs today, to be up against the clock. She’ll ring him, tell him she’s in a rush. Should have done it sooner.
She scrolls through her phone contacts, but there’s no sign of him. No, that can’t be – she always adds new clients to her phone as soon as they come in, keeps them there for as long as she needs to. She scrolls again, but he’s definitely not there. Had she been so distracted by the anniversary that she’d forgotten to put him in?
Evidently she had – but surely she has the page Mr Donnelly gave her with his number on it. She searches her bag but there’s no sign of it either: great.
She calls the office – maybe he’s rung to cancel. One new message, the answering machine tells her, sent at three thirty-seven. A few minutes after she left – must be him.
It is. This is Tom Wallace for Daphne, he says in the deep voice she remembers. We have an appointment at four. I’m afraid I’ve been delayed, but I’ll be there as soon as I can.
As soon as he can, whenever that’ll be. She’ll give him another few minutes and then she’ll go, drop into the office for his number after she’s been to the cemetery, make a new appointment. Not the end of the world.
To distract herself she has another walk around. The house is built on an oddly shaped plot, roughly a quarter-acre in size, the daisy-speckled lawn petering almost to a point at one end where the front garden wall meets a straggled hedge. There’s a tiny weather-beaten wooden shed tucked as far as possible into this narrow corner.
The shed door is unlocked but thoroughly stuck – anyone’s guess when it was opened last. Through the little cobwebby window she makes out a hedge clippers and a rusting watering can dangling from hooks, a jumble of battered paint tins and a dented wheelbarrow into which has been piled a ramshackle heap of dust-covered bottles. Stacks of newspapers lean against the end wall, next to tottering towers of plastic plant pots. Has he never heard of recycling?
She turns and regards the house again. The front of it is pebble-dashed, with what looks like a relatively new red-tiled roof and three big windows, two of them bay, all shielded with heavily embossed net curtains that don’t allow a look inside. The wooden front door has been painted dark blue, with a quartet of stained-glass panes set into the top third.
Around the back the windows are similarly veiled in net, giving her no clue as to the rooms within. The rear door is white uPVC with frosted-glass insets; she can make out shadowy shapes beyond them but no more.
She walks to the little wooden gate and looks out. The cul-de-sac is quiet, no sign or sound of life from the dozen or so houses that make it up, the residents presumably out at work. A couple of cars are parked in driveways, a few others pulled up close to garden walls.
She feels a wet splotch on her cheek, and then another: just what she needs. She heads back to the house and presses up against the front wall, but it provides next to no shelter. The drops quickly turn into a proper shower. Her jacket becomes patched with damp, and within a minute water is dripping from the ends of her hair.
This is ridiculous: she’s waited long enough. She picks up her briefcase and is about to stride down the path when she hears a car turning into the cul-de-sac. Horrible timing – another half-minute and she would have been gone. Now she’ll be watching the clock to finish, but she can hardly tell him to get lost.
She watches the car approach, waits while it pulls in close to the garden wall. Let’s see what he has to say for himself.
‘Sorry, I’m so sorry.’ He scrambles out and slams the door. ‘I called your work but I only got a machine, I’m really sorry, something came up.’ He pushes open the gate and strides towards her, hand extended. ‘Tom Wallace, you must be Daphne.’
Dark hair, grey suit, half a foot taller than her. A not-unpleasant waft of something woody as he approaches. She summons as much of a smile as she can and shakes his hand: much warmer than hers. Of course it is – sitting in his heated car while she stood shivering on his doorstep.
‘God, you’re frozen.’ He stabs a key into the front-door lock. ‘Come inside – I’m afraid there’s no heat, but at least you’ll be out of the elements.’
No heat: this afternoon is getting better. She follows him over the threshold and into a short, narrow hallway that smells strongly of tobacco.
‘Hang on,’ he says, vanishing around a corner. She takes in the awful flock wallpaper, the wide old wooden floorboards, the pine doors leading off to her left and right. The air is frigid with cold, no sign of a radiator – who has a
house without central heating these days?
She presses a light switch, but the bulb suspended above her within its dusty fringed shade doesn’t react. The tobacco smell is overpowering: he must smoke like a chimney. She’ll have to do something about that if prospective buyers aren’t to be put off right from the start.
The tips of her fingers are numb. Her wet hair clings unpleasantly to her head. Her trousers are stuck to her thighs. The last thing she feels like doing is going through this drab little house trying to find good things to say about it.
‘Here.’ He’s back, passing her a blue towel, thin and hard. ‘All I could find, I’m afraid, but at least it’s dry.’
She takes it from him without a word, presses it to her face, gives her hair a brisk rub. Without a comb she must look a show, but he’s hardly in a position to complain.
‘So,’ he says, ‘how do you want us to do this?’
She hands him back the towel and clicks open her briefcase. She pulls out her tape measure and notebook. ‘I can handle it,’ she says crisply. ‘I’ll ask if I need any information.’
He nods, lips pressed together; she gets the impression he’s trying not to smile. Has she said something amusing? Does he think it’s funny that she’s wet and cold because of him?
‘Fine,’ he says. ‘I’ll keep out of your way, then.’
Left alone, she opens her notebook, clamping her teeth together to stop them chattering. A miracle if she doesn’t end up with pneumonia after this. She thinks longingly of a cup of tea – anything hot to wrap her hands around – but it looks like she’ll have to do without it. He probably doesn’t possess a kettle.
She begins to measure the hallway. This will be the fastest valuation in history.
It takes her just under an hour.
Very quickly she realises that the bungalow is in fact quite saleable, despite her negative first impression. Apart from a smallish dark stain at the bottom of one bedroom wall – which experience tells her probably isn’t anything major – the place seems structurally sound. It’s also quite well laid out, with two good-sized bedrooms, a bathroom between them that will have to be described as compact, a surprisingly light-filled kitchen that stretches the width of the house – undoubtedly one of its main selling points – and a small sitting room with a fireplace that she imagines would be cosy if anyone bothered to light a fire.
The décor is appalling – he has no clue – but that’s easily fixed. The ancient wallpaper could be steamed off and replaced with paint, the flowery curtains binned, with their net partners, the old wooden floors sanded and varnished – they could be beautiful – and the furniture that looks like it’s been there since the Flood consigned to a skip. And all of that would help to banish the cigarette smell that seems to have seeped into every pore of the place.
The house is pretty much empty of ornamentation. No table lamps anywhere, no vases, no knick-knacks, the sitting-room mantelpiece bare apart from a stilled dusty carriage clock. Little on the walls too – a few framed photos in the kitchen featuring various combinations of the same four people: the owner himself, a young woman with dark bobbed hair, a little brown-haired boy, two or three years old, and a frail-looking elderly man.
There’s a picture of the Sacred Heart in the sitting room, complete with red lamp beneath – amazingly, still lit – and a Constable print in the larger of the two bedrooms, above a double bed whose mattress is covered only with a salmon-pink candlewick spread. No pillows, no sheets.
Clearly, he doesn’t live here any more, and neither does anyone else. The wardrobes in both rooms are empty, not a single item of clothing to be found, nothing in the rather battered chest of drawers in the main bedroom. A folded grey towel, just as hard as the one she was given, rests alone in the small hotpress. No toothbrush in the bathroom, no razor, not even a sliver of soap.
She decides there’s been a break-up. He’s separated or divorced from the woman in the photos, and she moved out with their little boy. She broke his heart, and he can’t bear to stay in the home they shared so he’s moved out too, into temporary accommodation – a poky bedsit, probably – and he’s selling up now and planning to find another house with no bad associations.
She has no evidence to prove any of this, of course, but it’s a common enough scenario. If the walls could talk, she’s pretty sure they’d corroborate her theory. She feels her annoyance dissipating as she considers his situation; for all she knows, he might have come from a fraught meeting with his ex. Trying to sort out custody of their little son, maybe.
‘It’s quiet around here,’ she observes, packing her things away. ‘I was never down this road before.’
‘It’s a peaceful spot,’ he agrees. ‘Not many people know it exists.’
He sat all the time with a newspaper in the chilly little sitting room and didn’t attempt to get involved as she moved through the house. Thankfully he didn’t produce a cigarette while she was there, although she suspects the smell will linger anyway in her clothes and hair when she leaves.
Her throat feels unpleasantly dry, as if she’s been inhaling smoke all through her visit. Not even a glass of water was she offered, let alone a cup of tea. Then again, she doesn’t remember noticing a glass, or any other crockery, in the kitchen.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ she tells him. ‘We’ll get a sign erected on Monday.’
‘That would be good.’
He walks to the door with her. The rain has stopped but the ground is puddled, the air still cool. He looks up the road. ‘I take it you have a car somewhere.’
‘Larkin Crescent.’ She can’t wait to get in and put the heat on full blast.
‘Right so.’ He puts out a hand, and she shakes it again, marvelling at its warmth after an hour in that house. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he says, ‘and sorry again about the late start.’
He’s not too bad. She’ll forgive him the late start.
Outside the gate she checks her watch: nearly half five. The cemetery isn’t that far but it’s Friday and rush hour, no time to be lost.
She makes her way rapidly back along the cul-de-sac and turns left into Larkin Crescent. There’s nobody about, no sign of activity.
She scans the street, doesn’t see her red car. Didn’t she park it just there, outside the blue gate? She looks left and right: the car is nowhere to be seen.
She feels a prickle of anxiety. It must be around the corner. She must have left it further away than she’d thought. She walks quickly to the bend, still sees no sign of the car. God, where is it?
She retraces her steps, more running than walking now, heart pitter-pattering, skin tight with apprehension. Don’t let it be gone, please don’t let it be gone. She goes to the opposite end of the crescent, scans the next road: nothing.
It’s gone.
Her car is gone.
Her car has been stolen.
She returns, heart sinking, to where she left it. Definitely she parked here: she remembers the blue gate. She checks the road – no sign of broken glass. She pushes open the gate, marches up the path, jabs at the doorbell. She listens to it echoing within, hands clenched into fists. When nothing happens she rings it a second time, presses her ear to the door, finally hears approaching footsteps.
There’s a fumbling, a rattle of metal on metal. The door is opened a few inches, as far as the security chain will allow.
‘Yes?’ The slice of face that peers out is female, and elderly. The voice is high, with a sharp edge to it. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ Daphne says in a rush. ‘It’s just that – my car, I parked it outside—’
‘Have you ID?’
She stops, thrown. ‘What? No, you don’t—’
‘I need ID, or I’m calling the guards.’
‘What? My car’s been stolen. I had it parked right outside your house for about—’
‘You had no right to park there,’ the woman says crossly. ‘That parking space is for me and my—’
/> ‘Oh, forget it,’ Daphne says, turning away, swiping at the tears that have sprung up. Trust her to park outside the house of possibly the least helpful person on the road – and why did it have to be stolen today, of all days?
The street remains deserted. The rain begins again, a sudden heavy fall. She ignores it, takes a deep breath and tries to think. What can she do? Who can help her?
Not her father, busy with driving lessons all afternoon. George? No, she can’t bother him – he’ll be getting ready for his school thing. Mo: she’s good in an emergency, she’ll know what to do. But Mo’s phone rings and rings, and remains unanswered.
She’ll have to phone the police, of course, report the theft – but first she must get to the cemetery, she must get there today, and already it’s gone twenty-five to six.
In the end she calls a taxi.
‘Larkin Crescent,’ she says, giving the number on the door of the house she just visited. ‘To St Patrick’s Cemetery. Please hurry.’
She hangs up, casting around for shelter and finding none. Can this day get any worse? The rain pelts down on her in earnest; her hair, her clothes, her shoes, everything is quickly soaked for the second time. She shouldn’t have phoned a taxi, she should just have started walking. Maybe she could—
‘Daphne?’
She starts. Tom Wallace’s silver car has pulled up beside her. She never heard him coming.
‘My car,’ she says, the words tumbling out, her voice shaking ridiculously, ‘it’s been stolen. I need to get to St Patrick’s Cemetery before it closes at six.’
He doesn’t miss a beat. ‘Hop in,’ he says, reaching across to open the passenger door.
She gets in, pulls the door closed. Least he can do – this mess could well be down to him and his late arrival. His car is chilly, but the heat is already on – he switches the fan to full blast. ‘Soon be warm,’ he says. His wipers flick rapidly to and fro, sweeping water away. He moves off. ‘Have you called the guards?’
Two Fridays in April Page 4
