by Camilla Way
Viv nods gratefully. ‘Thanks. When does it open?’
‘About eleven, but he lives above it. Carl’s his name. Go and knock on his door, he won’t mind.’
When she reaches the pub she peers through the window at its dark interior. There’s a narrow front door next to its entrance which looks as though it might belong to the flat above. She presses the bell and waits. She’s about to press it a second time when an upper window opens and a middle-aged man sticks out his bald head. ‘You looking for me, love?’ he asks.
She peers up at him, shielding her eyes from the bright winter sun. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. My name’s Viv, Vivienne Swift. I used to live in the village. I’m looking for the Drydens. The lady in the newsagents said you might be able to help.’
‘Hold on a tick.’ The head disappears and a minute or so later the door of the pub opens. He’s a large man with a pleasant round face and smiling eyes, a belly so protruding she wonders how he stays upright. ‘Come in,’ he says. ‘I’m Carl.’ She follows him into the pub where sunlight shines through the windows to pool on the richly patterned carpet and the air is thick with the scent of stale beer and furniture polish. The chairs are stacked on each of the waggon wheel tables but he takes a couple down and gestures for her to sit. Then he tilts his head, considering her. ‘Bloody hell,’ he says wonderingly. ‘Vivienne Swift. I remember you.’
She blinks at him. ‘Really?’
‘Yeah, I was in your sister’s class at primary school.’
She feels a surge of emotion at this. There’s something very moving about meeting someone who knew Ruby as a child, who actually remembers her from the days before Jack destroyed their lives.
Before she can reply, he adds, ‘I remember what happened. Terribly sad. We all loved Ruby. She used to work here, as you probably know. Such a shock to us all.’ He shakes his head. ‘Bastard should have got life. Should never have been released.’
‘Do you remember him then? Jack Delaney?’ she asks.
He grimaces. ‘Not much, enough to know he was a nasty piece of work, him and his brothers – though apparently they’ve gone straight. Model citizens, so I hear.’ He raises his eyebrows sceptically.
‘Do they … do the Delaneys still live near the village?’
‘His brothers do. The mother and uncle are both dead. In fact Jack’s mum died earlier this year. Had the funeral in the church over there.’
‘Did Jack go to it?’
Carl shakes his head. ‘No, love. Probably knew what sort of reception he’d get if he showed his face round here. As far as I know, only his brothers turned up.’
She takes this in silently. ‘I’m trying to find Morris. Morris Dryden. Do you remember him?’
‘Morris?’ He frowns. ‘Yeah, his dad had the butcher’s.’
She nods eagerly. ‘Do you know where he is?’
He looks at her strangely. ‘I’m afraid he’s dead too, love.’
Her stomach drops. ‘Dead?’ she says faintly. ‘How? He can’t have been that old?’
‘Hung himself,’ is the blunt response and Viv stares at him in shock. ‘Yeah, ’fraid so.’ Carl folds his arms. ‘Can’t have been that long after you and your mum left the area. Awful business. He was only twenty-one. His parents never recovered. Goes against all nature, don’t it, having to bury your own child.’ His face alters. ‘Oh God, sorry, I wasn’t thinking.’
She waves his apology away and asks, ‘Did anyone know why? Why he killed himself, I mean?’
‘Who can say? We were all very shocked – he didn’t seem the type. Lovely bloke, he was. Had a good heart.’
She nods, trying to take it in. ‘Are his parents both dead too?’
At this Carl feels around in his jacket pocket, then pulls out an elaborate vaping machine. He inhales deeply before blowing out a billowing strawberry-scented cloud into the air. ‘Ned is,’ he says. ‘Had a stroke about ten years ago, but Val, she’s alive, though only just, love her. She’s in the old folks home up on Wellbeck Road. My auntie pops up to see her every so often.’
Viv considers this silently. After a while she says despondently, ‘I don’t suppose you know what happened to the Fairbanks, do you? The couple who lived a few houses up from us on Ambrose Lane?’
Carl screws up his face, trying to remember. ‘God, I’d forgotten about them.’ He pauses, thinking hard. ‘The Cockles have lived there for so long it’s hard to remember, but now you mention it I’ve an idea the Fairbanks moved away around the same time you did.’
She nods, trying not to let her hope evaporate. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know of anyone who might have kept in touch with them or have any idea where they might have moved to?’ she says. ‘It’s very important.’
He shrugs. ‘I can ask around. Seem to remember he was a bit of an awkward sod. Don’t think he was too popular around here, though I can’t recall why. But I’ll ask my aunt. If anyone will know, she will.’ He grins, ‘Bit of a busy-body, my Auntie Sue. Likes to keep tabs on the comings and goings of the village.’
She remembers Declan Fairbanks’ cold gaze, the squirming feeling of disgust and confusion that grows stronger every time she thinks of him, and nods. ‘Thank you, I’d really appreciate it.’ She finds a pen in her handbag and scribbles down her number on an old receipt. ‘If you do hear anything about where he might be now, please give me a call. Like I said, it’s very important.’
He takes the number and studies her intently. ‘Bloody hell, Viv Swift! I can’t believe it! You keeping well, are you? I’ve thought of you and your mum often over the years, it was such a bloody terrible thing. I don’t think any of us in the village ever quite got over it, to be honest.’ He shakes his head. ‘But you’re keeping all right, are you? You look well, I must say,’ he adds encouragingly, clearly hoping for a happy ending to the tragedy.
She looks back at his round, cheerful face and thanks God that, if he’s watched the news in the last twenty-four hours, he hasn’t made the connection between the missing south-east London girl with the woman who sits in front of him. ‘I’m fine,’ she says with all the reassurance she can muster. ‘I’m doing OK. Thank you.’ She gets to her feet. ‘And thanks for your help, I really do appreciate it.’
‘No problem!’ He walks her to the door. ‘I’ll see what I can find out about the Fairbanks and give you a bell.’ As she turns to leave, he surprises her by wrapping her in a bear hug. ‘Little Vivi Swift. It’s lovely to see you after all this time,’ he says, clearly emotional.
When she’s safely back in her car she sits in stupefied silence, thinking over Carl’s words. Morris, dead. She slams her palms on the steering wheel. ‘Fuck!’ But why did he kill himself, she wonders. Because he had something to do with Ruby’s death and couldn’t live with the guilt? Because he let an innocent man – no matter how awful – go to prison? But what would have been Morris’s motive for killing Ruby? Because he loved her and she didn’t love him back? As hard as she tries, she can find no answers. She checks her watch: 9 a.m. Turning the key in the ignition she follows her satnav to Wellbeck Road.
15
Meadow View Retirement Home is a modern, yellow-brick building situated amongst nicely kept lawns. When Viv presses the buzzer she’s let in by a short black woman with a Jamaican accent, wearing a neat lavender-coloured uniform and a name badge on her chest that says Yolanda Evans, Deputy Manager. As Viv follows her white squeaking pumps towards reception, she inhales the institutionalized smell of school dinners and disinfectant. The building is so unbearably overheated after the freezing cold air outside that she feels quite sick. ‘Are you related?’ Yolanda Evans asks cheerfully when she hears Viv’s request to see Valerie Dryden.
‘No, I’m an old friend of the family’s. I was passing through and thought I’d come and say hi.’ She makes herself hold the other woman’s gaze, smiling brightly through her lie.
Apparently satisfied, Yolanda nods. ‘OK. Well, she’ll be happy to see you I’m sure. Better not stay too long t
hough, she gets very tired.’ And with that she motions for Viv to follow her.
Valerie’s room is small but pretty with mint-green flocked wallpaper and a view of the garden. She’s sitting in an armchair watching television when Viv walks in and Viv pauses at the door, taking in the frail figure in her pink dressing gown, her hair in white wisps around her face.
When Valerie looks up and notices her, she smiles uncertainly. ‘Hello, dear.’
‘Hello, Mrs Dryden.’ Viv returns her smile as she approaches. ‘I don’t know if you remember me, but I used to live in the village. My name’s Vivienne Swift and my mum was Stella Swift. I had a sister named Ruby.’
Unexpectedly, recognition shines in the pale, rheumy eyes and she points her remote control at the TV screen and turns it off. ‘Yes, I know. Vivienne Swift, from Ambrose Lane.’ Her head bobs constantly on her fragile neck as she reaches out a trembling hand. Viv takes it in her own, the fingers like twigs wrapped in tissue paper. ‘Sit down, dear, sit down,’ Valerie says, indicating the armchair next to hers.
‘How are you?’ Viv asks when she’s seated. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’ As she gazes at Morris’s frail, tiny mother a memory surfaces of Valerie as a much younger woman, blonde and smiling, full of energy and fierce protectiveness of her son.
‘I remember you,’ Valerie says again, still holding Viv’s hand. ‘Such a sweet girl. And your sister too, so pretty. I always felt so sorry for you, you didn’t deserve it, but what could anyone do?’ She pulls her fingers from Viv’s and they flutter to her throat.
‘Mrs Dryden,’ Viv says gently, leaning forward. ‘I don’t want to upset you, but I wondered if I could talk to you about Morris.’
The old woman looks back at her, stricken. ‘My Morris? He’s dead, dear. Morris died. Didn’t you know?’
Vivienne nods. ‘I did know, yes and I’m so sorry for your loss.’ She swallows. Every scrap of decency in her tells her to leave Mrs Dryden in peace, to not dredge up such painful memories, but Cleo needs her to find the truth and so she says, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Dryden, but I need your help. I’m trying to find answers about my sister Ruby’s death, and …’ She reaches over and takes Valerie’s fluttering hand in her own. ‘Mrs Dryden, I’m so sorry to ask you this, but why did Morris kill himself? Do you know why he did it?’
Valerie stares at her, her pale eyes searching Viv’s until Viv continues, ‘Was it because of something he did that was bad, something he couldn’t live with, do you think?’
At this Valerie nods. ‘Yes, dear,’ she says. ‘That’s right. He did it because he lied.’
Viv can scarcely breathe. ‘About what?’
But Valerie is straining to look around Vivienne to the door. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Can I get you something? A biscuit maybe? If you call for Yolanda, I think she’d get you one …’
‘No.’ Viv shakes her head. ‘I’m fine. Please, Valerie, Mrs Dryden, I’m so sorry to have to ask you this, but you were talking about Morris, about how he lied. Can you remember what it was he lied about?’
The old woman turns her face away to gaze out of the window. ‘The night before he died, he came to me before bed and he seemed so sad. He could get like that sometimes. I asked him what the matter was and he said he had a secret, and that the secret had been eating him up and he couldn’t live with it no more. I didn’t know what he meant.’ She pauses, considering this, nodding continuously. ‘Well, I gave him a cuddle and he went up to bed. We were very close, you see, me and Morris. Next day we found him.’ She looks stricken. ‘Poor little Morris, we loved him so much, his dad and me.’
Vivienne nods and urges her on. ‘Who did he lie to, Mrs Dryden? Was it about Ruby?’
Valerie turns her face back to her and her frail voice is full of anger. ‘They wouldn’t leave him alone, those Delaneys! Wish we’d moved away, wish we’d protected him from them. But Ned, my husband, he didn’t want us to. We had our business, you see. We thought when Jack went to prison, that’d be the end of it.’ Tears brim in her eyes. ‘We found him, my poor little boy. He was just a little boy, underneath. He’d never hurt a fly.’
Viv leans forward and touches Valerie’s arm, tears in her own eyes now. ‘I’m so sorry for upsetting you,’ she says. ‘I really am so sorry. But this is so important. What do you think he meant when he said he’d lied, do you know?’
Valerie doesn’t answer, just continues to stare ahead, nodding to herself, her fingers plucking at her dressing gown.
‘Please,’ Vivienne begs, ‘please, please tell me. My little girl …’ her voice catches and she swallows hard. ‘My daughter’s only thirteen, and she’s in terrible danger. I need to find out what happened to Ruby. I think Morris might have known who killed her. I think he lied about seeing Jack Delaney that day. If there’s anything you can remember, anything that Morris said that might help me …’
But Valerie only glances at her, and her eyes are glazed and unreadable. A flash of confusion passes through them, then she smiles tenderly at her. And Vivienne can’t tell whether the old woman’s silence is due to incomprehension or deliberate obtuseness, but she grips Valerie’s arm more firmly and pleads, ‘Valerie, it’s so important, tell me what Morris lied about. Please tell me!’
Valerie looks past her, to the door and Viv turns to see that Yolanda has appeared, and she’s looking at them both in alarm. ‘Valerie, are you all right?’ She crosses the room and peers at her, then turns to Viv, her voice firm. ‘I think you’d better go. Mrs Dryden is clearly very tired and needs to rest.’ She waits expectantly, her arms folded.
For a moment Viv continues to look imploringly at Valerie. But when Yolanda clears her throat meaningfully, she reluctantly, and with crushing disappointment, gets to her feet. And then, just as she’s about to move away Valerie reaches over and lightly touches her hand. ‘I’m sorry we didn’t help you back then,’ she says. ‘We wanted to. We did.’ Her eyes flutter shut as she adds, ‘Thank you so much for coming, Ruby, but I’m rather tired now.’
Viv stares down at her in silence, a nameless longing spreading through her. She has a sudden, overwhelming desire to kneel down and lay her head on this elderly woman’s lap, feel those frail, delicate hands stroke her hair, breathe in her smell of skin lotion and tea rose shampoo, and the longing is so strong that she has to force herself to turn around and walk away. Ruby, she thinks as she leaves, she called me Ruby, and this feels like the saddest thing of all.
Vivienne sits in her car, motionless. She feels as if all the layers of her have been peeled off, one by one, until she is just the pain that rages in the centre of her. The car is stuffy, the winter sun burning through the windscreen making her nauseous, a dull ache pulsing behind her eyes. The vomit rises in her throat without warning and she barely has time to fling open the car door before she throws up into the gutter.
Afterwards she sits back and closes her eyes and thinks about how Valerie had called her son her ‘poor little Morris, my poor little boy’, as though he’d been but a small child, not a grown man of twenty-one when he died. And it strikes her that whenever she has thought of Cleo in the terrifying hours since she disappeared, that she, too, has felt as though it is the infant Cleo who has been wrenched from her arms, not the sturdy teenager she has grown into. Perhaps that’s the essence of a mother’s love, she thinks; an instinctive protectiveness that burns from the first second of your child’s life, reigniting just as fiercely whenever that child is in danger, no matter what their age, or however many years have passed.
When she drives back to the village she doesn’t stop until she reaches Ambrose Lane. She parks at the top and stands looking apprehensively down the familiar narrow track, the two clusters of cottages with the fields stretching out behind them, first numbers one and two then a gap before three and four, and finally their own, number five.
Steeling herself, she begins to make her way towards the first two cottages. When she reaches number two, the Fairbanks’ home, she sees a neat and tidy red-brick cot
tage that as far as she can tell has barely changed in the years since she last saw it. She gazes at it, waiting to see if that same eerie feeling she’d experienced the night before might return, but in fact it triggers no reaction at all. She has no memory of entering it, no recollection of its interior and is as certain as she can be that whatever she had half remembered before had not taken place within its walls.
She walks on until she reaches the next three cottages and the one that used to be theirs. It’s both the same and entirely different; the once grubby whitewashed bricks are now painted a fresh pale yellow, the casement windows replaced with double-glazed glass and PVC. A modest extension has been added to the side. It is pretty, well cared for, and the sight of it fills her with a creeping dread that begins at her scalp and prickles down her spine.
At that moment a woman comes out holding a baby on her hip. She’s in her early thirties, slender and blonde and looks a little tired and sad. ‘Can I help you?’ she asks.
‘Hi, sorry … I’m …’ Viv tries to catch her breath and holds out her hand. ‘I’m Vivienne, I used to live here.’
The woman’s youthful face brightens. ‘Oh! Did you? When was that?’
‘About thirty years ago. I was only a kid at the time.’
‘Well …’ the woman shrugs, ‘did you want to come in? You can if you want. Probably changed quite a bit.’
Though every inch of her longs to turn around and run as far away from the house as she can, Vivienne nods gratefully. ‘Thank you, I’d love to.’
It’s the strangest feeling being back there. She stands in the kitchen and remembers her mother sitting at the table, silently drinking bottle after bottle of wine – the horrible emptiness, the coldness after Ruby died. The woman shows her all the changes she and her husband have made, proudly pointing out the kitchen extension and conservatory, the newly landscaped garden, while Viv smiles and nods. She is lonely, Viv senses, and pleased for the company, but Viv wishes that she would be quiet so she could focus, allow the memories to flood back in. She turns to her and smiles. ‘It’s lovely,’ she says. ‘You’ve done wonders with the place.’
