There was no skip in Leon’s garden, as the houses were joined together in one long terrace. As was the case with Bea’s house. There was no convenient back alley down which refuse could be taken. Everything had to be taken out through the house itself.
Which meant, Bea realized with fury, that the fallen tree now occupying her garden would have to be sawn up twig by twig and branch by branch and carted away through her agency rooms, and up the narrow flight of steps to a skip in the road at the front. Aaargh! And getting a permit for a skip would take ages and cost a bomb! Unprintable words flew into her head. She repressed them with difficulty.
She noticed that the workmen in Leon’s garden had clustered around the fallen wall. The bricks had mostly fallen inside Bea’s garden. At some point in time, the wall on Leon’s side had been reinforced with knee-high brick piers. Some of these had been forced out of the ground when the wall fell and the workmen were looking down into the disturbed area of earth.
As Bea watched, one of them bent down to manoeuvre something – a stick? – out of the ground. Another dog’s grave?
Bea switched her attention to the house next door to Leon’s, the one in which all the trouble had started. This one had been paved over. Low maintenance: no shrubs, no planters, no lawn. The only greenery to be seen was where curtains of ivy overhung the walls and still tangled with the bricks that had fallen down. Oh, and a tumbledown sort of shed that probably had been put there to contain gardening tools in the days when there had been any gardening done. The only wall that wasn’t covered with ivy was the back wall of the house itself, where a balustrade protected some steps down to a basement flat. At least they’d had enough sense not to let the ivy attack the house.
The wall between Leon’s garden and that of the troublemaker had also toppled down, ending up mostly on his side. Smothered in ivy. Yes, very little of the damage was going to affect the man who’d started the problem off. Even the ladder that the gardener had been using appeared to be unbroken, as someone had picked it up and leaned it against the shed.
Bea wondered if Carrie had yet discovered the name of the people who lived in that house. She trusted they were well insured because personally she was going to sue the boxer shorts off them. Hah!
A young man – the gardener? – was walking up and down, talking a blue streak, gesticulating. Probably saying it wasn’t his fault. A dumpy-looking woman stood nearby, staring around her in dismay.
Suddenly Bea felt so tired, she had to sit or fall down. She let herself down on to her bed. Her head throbbed. The room swam around her. She would close her eyes for five minutes …
She started upright on hearing her front-door bell ring. Carrie called up the stairs. ‘Mrs Abbot, it’s the police.’
Bea pulled herself awake. How long had she been asleep? She tried to focus on her watch. Perhaps thirty minutes? Oh well.
She went out on to the landing and called out – or rather, croaked, ‘Would you ask them to come upstairs? They can see what’s happened better from here.’
Two members of the police force duly toiled up the stairs. One was a woman, a substantial blonde, sweating under the mountain of paraphernalia they all had to carry nowadays. With her was a slender Asian policeman.
The woman was in charge. She said, cheerfully, ‘Mrs Abbot?’ She flicked out some ID and gave her name. ‘I gather there may be some damage to your property.’
‘Come and see.’ Bea led the way into the sitting room. She pulled up the blind and stood aside, to give the police a view of the damage. Carrie followed. Carrie did like to be in on everything, didn’t she?
The two police crowded to the window and took in the fact that a fallen tree now occupied the garden below. Gaped. Said, ‘Oh.’
‘Yes,’ said Bea, rubbing her forehead in an effort to ease the pain. ‘Under the tree is my garden shed containing all my tools and garden furniture. Also various pots and plants that have been here for ever. Removing the tree is going to be …’
‘Ouch,’ said the girl, grimacing.
‘Yes. Then the party wall will have to be rebuilt. I can’t remember offhand whether it belongs to me or to the houses opposite.’
‘You’ll have to look at the deeds of the house. Your neighbours say it’s your responsibility, that you neglected to maintain the wall.’
Bea told herself not to scream. It hurt to use her voice but she managed in a whisper, ‘Look at the remaining walls in my garden … no ivy. We had a party here a while ago, in the garden. We took photos. They show what my garden looked like.’ She put a hand to her throat. ‘Sorry, can’t talk. We took photos today, too. Carrie …?’
Carrie was only too eager to show the photos she had on her smartphone. ‘Mrs Abbot was standing in the doorway downstairs when it happened, and it got into her throat and there’s red dust all over everything, the back of the house, everywhere. It’s going to take professional cleaners to get it off.’
Bea croaked, ‘I have to phone … solicitors, insurance people.’
The policewoman had her notebook out. ‘You’ll need a crime number. And, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll get a doctor to give you the once-over. That’ll help if your neighbour doesn’t accept responsibility.’
Carrie said, ‘Sir Leon won’t cause any trouble, will he?’
Bea pointed Leon’s house out to the policewoman. ‘Sir Leon Holland, that’s his house. He’s got builders in. They saw what happened.’
She looked over the tree into Leon’s garden. The workmen had withdrawn from the wall, but some strange men – and a woman – in uniform had arrived and were clustered around the spot where the latest dog’s bones had been found.
‘Who are they?’ said Bea.
The policewoman tore off a sheet of paper and handed it to Bea. ‘That’s your crime number. Sir Leon’s been out of touch for a few days, hasn’t he?’ A sideways look. ‘They found some bones in his garden. Do you know anything about them?’
‘The previous owners buried their dogs there.’
‘It takes all sorts. My gran keeps the ashes of her cats in a row on the windowsill in her kitchen. I tell her that one of these days they’ll end up in the soup, but she won’t listen. Those bones in the garden … they have to be looked at, just in case.’
‘In case of what?’
‘In case they’re human.’
TWO
Once the police had gone, Bea found herself dithering. Normally she didn’t dither. What! Bea Abbot, whose efficiency was a byword, who had turned the Abbot Domestic Agency from a tiny, if tidy, little business into one of the top agencies in London … was she really unsure what to do next?
Yes, she was. Shock, of course. And her head hurt, as did her eyes and her throat.
She tried to act normally. Back in her office, she wiped off the red dust which had settled on her desk and chair, and attacked the phone. She rang her doctor, who listened to her tale and said she should make her way to the nearest Accident and Emergency department at once. Well, she would, once she’d set the insurance people in motion.
She took a couple of aspirin for her headache, which didn’t seem to help. She made the first of what she feared might be many phone calls to the company which insured her property. They said she mustn’t try to move anything till one of their agents had been round to assess the damage, but they did give her the name of a firm who might deal with the fallen tree.
She found and printed off copies of the photographs showing what her garden had looked like the previous month, and asked Carrie to print off some of what it looked like now.
She looked at the diary. At two she was supposed to be interviewing a bumptious chef who thought he was God’s gift and who said that he was prepared to let her represent him if he liked what she had to offer him, and at half past she had an appointment with a customer who imagined she could get her bill reduced by complaining about something that hadn’t happened. Routine matters.
She realized she couldn’t cope. She asked Carrie either
to take those two appointments for her, or to postpone them till she felt better.
There was nothing from Leon. He should have landed by now, and be on his way back from the airport. He ought to have rung her as soon as he touched down. Why hadn’t he rung her? Perhaps his plane had been delayed? Perhaps there’d been a bomb scare somewhere and he was still locked down at some airport with an unpronounceable name in Japan or the Philippines or wherever. Or he’d been kidnapped from his hotel and was being held by masked terrorists at gunpoint.
She told herself she was being absurd, and knew that she was only just holding on to her sanity.
Nothing had happened to Leon. He would surface when he could.
She could hardly breathe, and her eyelids were puffy. She couldn’t see straight and her headache was pounding. She gathered herself together. She would take her doctor’s advice and get down to A & E at the hospital.
A tinkle on her internal phone. ‘Mrs Abbot?’ An agitated voice. Carrie’s? ‘There’s someone on the phone who wants to speak to you about the wall.’
Bea said, ‘Put them through.’
A woman’s voice, sharp, backed by a Force Ten rage. The rage was under control, but there was a thick layer of ice on top. ‘Mrs Abbot? I am your next-door neighbour. I return from an appointment at the osteopath’s only to find my garden wall in ruins. I understand that you are to blame. You will be hearing from my insurance people immediately, and I trust you will honour your liabilities—’
Hunh? ‘And your name is …?
‘You know perfectly well who I am.’
Public-school voice, upper middle class, accustomed to command. A bully. Not to be trusted. Manners? Pleasant with the few she might consider her equal, and condescending to the rest of the world?
Clearly, Bea came under the heading of ‘the rest of the world’. A ‘pleb’, to use a pejorative term.
Bea coughed, tried to clear her throat. ‘I regret that—’
‘You must think I’m a fool. If you hadn’t known who I was, you wouldn’t have tried it on. Admit it!’
Bea smothered another cough in her handkerchief and tried to think. She didn’t really know her neighbours to speak to. They might nod to one another in the street, but … which of her neighbours would this be? Both were elderly … no, one had recently moved away, hadn’t she? Bea couldn’t remember which one.
‘Don’t deny it! You planned the destruction of your wall, thinking I’d pay through the nose to have it fixed. Wrong! I’m going to sue you till you squeak! Punitive damages! Recompense for the suffering you have caused me and my family.’
Bea might have been amused by the woman’s effrontery if her head hadn’t been aching so badly. ‘Do you really think you can bully me into accepting responsibility for something I did not do?’
‘I have my builder working on the costs even as we speak.’
Bea sighed, coughed. Croaked. ‘I regret, being a poor widow woman, I can’t negotiate. I’ve contacted my insurance company. They’ll want to talk to yours. I’m off to the hospital now.’
‘I suppose you’re going to say you’ve got a whiplash injury? Pull the other one.’
Bea was fresh out of ideas. As a businesswoman who’d been on her own for many years, she rather despised those who dropped names to get themselves out of trouble, but in this case she considered it appropriate to do so. ‘Are you suing Sir Leon Holland as well?’
‘What!’ That gave the woman pause.
‘Our neighbour. The house with the builders in.’
‘Never heard of him.’
Surely that was a lie? ‘You swim in a small pond. Try an international one. Now, I’m gone.’ Down went her phone.
Carrie peered round the door. ‘Everything all right?’
Bea nodded and eased herself upright. ‘I’m off to A & E. Can you cope? And would you get me a cab? I don’t feel up to driving.’
Later that evening
She woke slowly, turning her head towards the delicious aroma of … fried bacon? No, not bacon, but … she opened her eyes a slit and sighed. The drops the hospital had given her were in the fridge in the kitchen; she was under a duvet in the sitting room and there were about twenty steps between the two. Twenty steps were twenty too many. On the other hand, if she didn’t make an effort, she wouldn’t get any relief. Her headache had subsided – a bit – but her sinuses were still blocked. She sneezed, wholeheartedly, reached out her hand for the tissues she usually kept on a table nearby, found them, and blew her nose.
‘Feeling better?’
She turned her head an inch to discover Leon sitting at the dining table in the front window, working on his laptop. One-handed, he was eating something out of a pile of takeaway dishes. Chinese? Taiwan? Not Indian. She tried to push herself upright and didn’t make it.
He abandoned his work to help her. ‘What do you want? A drink? Water? Something for your eyes?’
She nodded. Tried out her voice. It didn’t come out full strength, but she managed, ‘Kitchen. Fridge. Two small bottles. And water, yes.’
He obliged, even helping her to get the drops into her eyes and nose, handing her tissues to mop up the overflow. And a glass of iced water. Her throat was still bad, but she nodded her thanks and tried to smile.
He said, ‘I turn my back for five minutes …!’
She made a better attempt at a smile. ‘No great harm done. Dust in my sinuses, that’s all.’ She tried to move and found she couldn’t. Winston, her great big hairy lummox of a cat was lying across her knees with all four paws in the air. Fast asleep and too heavy to move. His silky fur shone with good health and a thorough grooming. Good.
She abandoned thoughts of getting out from under the cat and turned her attention back to Leon. ‘You got back, then.’ Stupid remark. Of course he had, or he wouldn’t be there, would he?
His eyes were anxious, but he was trying to smile. A big man, almost handsome, fair hair turning silver. A man who looked easy-going, but wasn’t. A man who usually kept his thoughts to himself. A man who’d had a deprived childhood and had made few friends. A man who ought to be taking more exercise than running up and down the steps of various aircraft. A man who had keys to her house but lived alone in a series of hotel rooms or in a penthouse suite in the City. A man who had planned to move into the house in the next street.
He’d intended to take her out to supper that night, hadn’t he?
He said, ‘We were delayed by a bomb scare. I tried to ring you from the airport, but you’d turned your phone off.’
She tried to remember. ‘Ah. Yes. At the hospital. Notices to turn mobiles off. Yes, I did turn mine off.’
‘I rang your landline and Carrie told me what had happened. She said she’d stay on till you got back. I arrived to find you had crashed out on the settee.’
Bea was annoyed. ‘Carrie takes too much on herself.’ She thought, Listen to me: Carrie’s only trying to help.
At the back of her head a quiet voice said that Carrie was taking on more responsibility because she wanted to take over the agency when Bea retired. For some reason Bea didn’t like the thought of it. It wasn’t that she disliked Carrie. No. It was because … she couldn’t think straight. She’d think about it on the morrow.
Leon gestured to the table. ‘Could you manage some food?’
‘Yes. No. I’m not sure. I don’t think so.’
He propped her up with cushions, and brought the food over to her. ‘Carrie also told me that your amusing and highly coloured lodger is away for the moment. Right?’
She nodded, managed to say, ‘Working abroad. Back next week, I think.’
‘So you’re all alone in the house, and it’s my turn to play nurse. You’ve looked after me so many times when I was down and out …’ He held a spoonful up to her mouth. ‘Open wide … that’s it.’
She did as she was told, and managed to get it down. Delicious, actually.
He said, ‘You look like a little bird, all ruffled feathers … open agai
n … and not like the Ice Queen who is so self-sufficient and rules her kingdom with a rod of iron.’
She tried to say, ‘I’m not an Ice Queen,’ but he had another spoonful ready for her to take, and it was less trouble to eat it than to object.
He was enjoying himself. Smiling. ‘I had a look at the damage at the back. I’ll see it’s put right, of course … open wide … though I can’t imagine how you must feel about the tree, which meant so much to you, didn’t it? Open … there’s a good girl. No permanent damage to you, I understand? And one more … that’s the last. Shall I get some ice cream out of the freezer for afters?’
She lifted a wavering hand to her head. Her hair … and no makeup! ‘What I must look like!’
He bent over to kiss her, first on one swollen cheek, and then, gently, on her lips. ‘You remind me of when I was little. I had an old wooden nutcracker doll. I loved it, scratches and bashes and all, because it had been through the wars and survived. It got thrown away when I went to boarding school. So, what flavour ice cream?’
He removed himself to fetch the ice cream and she closed her eyes again. Winston stirred on her lap and she buried her fingers in his fur. Winston wasn’t going to move unless forced to do so. She didn’t feel like moving, either. Did she really give the impression of being an Ice Queen? Perhaps she did.
She’d married straight from school, been abandoned by her first husband – who had had ambitions to be a portrait painter and who had found a wife and baby son a hindrance to his tom-catting ways. He’d left Bea to bring up their son alone, to work all hours, to find a niche in the Abbot Agency and eventually to marry its owner, Hamilton Abbot, who had in- herited the business from two maiden aunts. Bea’s second husband had adopted her son and then, following some years of increasing prosperity and contentment in marriage, there had come his long, slow decline and death … and the struggle to keep the agency going.
Yes, she’d succeeded, but it had cost her something, and it wasn’t surprising she’d had to develop some kind of armour against the world. Ice Queen, indeed!
False Wall Page 2
