One year later and she had just been finding her feet, starting to feel as if she wasn’t making stupid mistakes all the bloody time when the little situation with Mr and Mrs Carter blew-up. It didn’t feel fair. If there was such a thing as a Career Fairy, she wasn’t sprinkling any of her magic over Lydia.
Climbing the stairs to the exit at Denmark Hill station and joining the fume-filled street, Lydia decided to call her boss. She couldn’t put it off any longer and, besides, she had read somewhere that standing to make a phone call helped you to be more assertive on the line. Right now, Lydia felt as if she needed every advantage she could muster, so she tucked under the cover of a bus stop, straightened her shoulders and pressed the call button. Karen picked up almost immediately. ‘It’s Lydia,’ she said, aware that she was using a new phone and Karen wouldn’t have her number.
‘You're being cautious?’ Karen said.
‘Of course,’ Lydia replied, offended.
‘It’s all been quiet here,’ Karen said. ‘Nothing doing.’
That was a relief. Unless it meant that the action had simply followed her to London.
‘How are you?’ Karen wasn’t one for touchy-feeling emotional conversations, so Lydia knew this was a business query.
‘Two weeks ought to do it and then I’ll be back.’
‘Good. I can’t hold the position for longer than that.’
‘I understand,’ Lydia said. It was expected, but Lydia still felt her heart sink to her stomach. Two weeks wasn’t long. Worse still, she knew that if she had failed to find Madeleine alive and well a damn-sight earlier, losing her job was going to the be the least of her worries. If her suspicions about this being a set-up weren’t true and somebody really had messed with Madeleine Crow, outright war in London was a distinct possibility.
* * *
Lydia passed her boat-like Volvo when she was still three streets away from the cafe. It had been the closest she had been able to park and she gave it a cursory check as she walked by. Even if she hadn’t had wine, she felt no desire to drive it around to look for a closer space. It wasn’t worth the hassle.
Well Street, imaginatively named back when Camberwell was still clinging to its roots as a sleepy village, was a typical London thoroughfare. Victorian and Georgian architecture brooded above the plate glass windows of the betting shops and hairdressers. There was a nice-looking pub which had obviously had the full modern refurb and gastro-food makeover, a newsagent, and even an honest-to-god hardware store which seemed to sell everything from screws to hair extensions. There was a branch of the Silver’s firm in Camberwell but, naturally, the office was on the fanciest street in the borough, its windows overlooking the park.
Lydia hadn’t meant to stop, but the fruit outside the grocer looked so shiny and appetising that she suddenly had a craving for something sweet and juicy and wholesome. She was more familiar with cravings for fatty goodness or the promise of alcoholic mind-shut-up potion, so was taken by surprise. The shelves outside the glass window of the shop were beautifully presented with punnets of strawberries, apricots, grapes and plums nestled on bright plastic grass and little chalkboards with the prices. Still, it usually took more than a bit of Instagram-worthy styling to make Lydia want to ingest vitamins and, the closer she looked, the more she could see that there was something special about the fruit. It wasn’t just delicious-looking, it was downright tempting.
Inside the shop the smell was intoxicating. Fresh. Sweet. Good. Sharp citrus mingled with tropical and apple notes and Lydia felt an overwhelming urge to pick up one of the handy wicker baskets piled at the entrance and fill it to the brim. She wanted to pick up one of the gigantic white peaches and sink her teeth right into it, could imagine the juice running down her throat so vividly that it was as if it had already happened. She realised that she was standing stock-still in the middle of the room, her eyes shut and she forced them open. She had a peach in her hand, an inch from her lips. The fuzz of the skin felt like the finest fabric she had ever touched and the colour the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Something was definitely up. She deliberately moved the peach away from her mouth and, with an effort of will, put it down.
Lydia was being watched. There wasn’t a traditional shop counter, just a till next to a weighing machine on a high round table, like the kind you got in a bar. Next to it was a teenage girl perched on a stool, which also looked like it had been nicked from a nightclub. The girl had glossy black hair which was swept to one side in a low ponytail. Her eyes were heavily-lined in Kohl, making the whites of her eyes startling.
‘I like your shop,’ Lydia said. It wasn’t what she had intended to say, but she was finding it increasingly difficult to think. The urge to sink her teeth into a peach or a plum or bite into a crunchy apple was crowding everything else out.
The girl didn’t smile but she inclined her head slightly.
That’s when Lydia saw it and everything fell into place. A shining pearl was fixed in the second piercing of her left ear. Lydia had walked right into a shop owned by a Pearl. No wonder she wanted to buy the whole lot.
She nodded and smiled, not wanting to be rude, and then backed out of the door. The produce was still calling to her, still making her mouth water and her insides contract with hunger, but now that her brain was engaged, the veil had lifted slightly. Enough, anyway, to give her motor control of her feet and creep her way out onto the street.
Lydia didn’t stop moving until she was several shop fronts away and, even then, she didn’t dare look back. She made a mental note never to pass so closely again, to cross the road at that point and not to look at the fruit displayed on the pavement. She couldn’t believe how intense the effect had been. When had the Pearls got so strong?
Chapter Six
Back at The Fork, Lydia side-stepped a crate of cleaning supplies which had mysteriously materialised next to the door to the stairs, and headed up to the flat. She had brought in her bags and suitcase from the car before going to Emma’s but before unpacking, she went through the rooms, looking for the ghost. ‘Hello? If you are here don’t pop up behind me or something. I’m not in the mood.’ She waited a beat. Nothing.
After organising her stuff, Lydia went online to check out Madeleine’s social media. She had a Facebook page but, like most nineteen year olds, didn’t seem to use it very much. There were pictures of her with her friends, arms around each other’s necks or holding up their fingers to their faces. She had been tagged in a beach-shot in Ibiza with the caption ‘St A crew chilling’. The picture showed a group of bronzed and lovely girls in bikinis and St A referred to St Anne’s, Madeleine’s former private girls’ school. Madeleine wasn’t looking at the camera and smiling, but instead looked away, at something out of shot, and it gave her a whimsical, thoughtful appearance. Was that the image of a girl who had run away from home? A girl who was planning a great escape?
Could you even run away from home at nineteen? Lydia imagined, for a moment, telling the police. ‘And the woman is nineteen? And she’s been out of contact with her family for one week?’ A beat. ‘Are you on crack?’ In imagining ‘the police’ the image of Fleet had come to mind and it was his voice that was heavily laden with sarcasm as it asked why she was panicking over a grown women not being in touch with her parents for seven days. He was asking all of this in his delicious, deep voice. It was rather... Pleasant. Get a grip, Lydia.
Lydia threatened herself with a cold shower and returned to the screen to resume cyberstalking her second cousin. Madeleine didn’t appear to be on Twitter at least, not under her own name, and her Snapchat was only available to accepted friends. Lydia sent a request with the message ‘hey cuz’. Her Instagram hadn’t been updated since last week. Madeleine’s last post was an arty shot of a couple of tall glasses filled with sparkling clear liquid, dotted with red pomegranate seeds. The hashtags included #adultdrinks #adulting and #cocktailfun.
Lydia squinted at the picture for a while, trying to work out w
hether there was anything in the picture which identified the bar before realising that one of the hashtags actually gave the location. #Foxy She scrolled back through Madeleine’s pictures until she found one of a box of matches with gold embossed letters spelling Club Foxy underneath a logo which showed a stylised outline of a foxes head. Lydia’s relief that it didn’t look like the logo of a strip club (in Aberdeen, the word ‘foxy’ would definitely indicate women dancing sadly on podiums wearing micro shorts if not a full-out brothel) was suddenly and unpleasantly replaced by the realisation that should have come first... Club Foxy might have links to the Fox Family. It would be a brave business-owner in Camberwell who named their establishment ‘Foxy’ if they weren’t cuddled up with the Family. ‘Bollocks.’
‘Language,’ the ghost appeared next to the sofa, making Lydia’s heart leap.
‘You are going to give me a heart attack if you keep popping up like that.’
‘So-rree,’ the ghost said petulantly, hands on hips. ‘I was talking for ages. It’s not my fault you didn’t hear me.’
‘You’ve been there for ages?’ Lydia tried not to feel creeped out and failed.
Ghost-boy nodded and the motion made Lydia want to throw up.
‘What’s bollocks, anyway?’ He moved behind the sofa and leaned down to look at her laptop screen.
Lydia clicked to close the browser window and then wondered why she had bothered. Secrecy was such an ingrained habit, but who was he going to tell? His ghost pals? ‘Do you speak to other people?’
‘I told you, no one else can see me.’
‘No. I mean –’ Lydia stopped herself from saying ‘dead people’. That seemed harsh. ‘Other spirits.’
The ghost moved through the sofa and then arranged himself in a sitting position next to Lydia. He placed his hands carefully onto his knees, keeping his gaze dipped. Just when Lydia though he wasn’t going to answer, he said: ‘I haven’t spoken to anyone since I died.’
Well, that sucked. ‘I’m sorry,’ Lydia said.
He glanced at her and she could see his eyes glistening with unshed tears. He wiped a hand across his face and sniffed.
‘I’m trying to find my second cousin. She’s nineteen and hasn’t been seen by friends or family for a week.’
Ghost-boy perked up. ‘You think she’s dead?’
‘No!’ Being a ghost really messed with your sense of propriety. Or he had always been insensitive. Murderous and insensitive. Suddenly it didn’t seem like the best combo, and Lydia wondered if she ought to make more of an effort to be friendly. She re-opened the browser window and angled the screen towards him. ‘I’m checking to see what she was doing before she disappeared and I found this picture.’
Lydia felt the ghost lean closer and the air temperature dropped a couple of degrees. ‘She was clubbing?’
‘Looks like,’ Lydia said. ‘Which isn’t exactly shocking. It’s just…’
The ghost was frowning at the screen. ‘Foxy? That sounds a bit –’
‘Indeed,’ Lydia cut across him. ‘I’m guessing that when Uncle Charlie called Madeleine’s pals they wouldn’t have been in too big a hurry to tell him where they had all been partying.’
He whistled and it sent a shiver that started at Lydia’s scalp and ran over every inch of her skin. She grimaced.
‘What?’ The ghost leaned closer, his face getting more strange and inhuman. ‘I can’t help sounding this way. Don’t you think I would prefer not to be dead?’
‘Sure, but I’d prefer not to be haunted. At least you can move out. Which is something I would strongly advise. I don’t need an undead flatmate. I need peace and quiet and not to be given a heart attack anytime soon.’
The ghost moved back, his face a picture of hurt. Eventually, he said: ‘It’s called ‘moving on’, you know.’
Lydia tried, and failed, to stamp down on her irritation. ‘I don’t care what you call it as long as you vacate my house.’
‘One, it’s not your house,’ he held up one finger. ‘Two, it’s not a house,’ he held up a second digit. ‘And three, I’m not going anywhere.’
‘This must be what it’s like to have an annoying little brother,’ Lydia said. ‘Thank Christ I’m an only child.’
‘This must be what it’s like to finally have a living human being to communicate with after thirty lonely years, only to find out they are a total dick.’ And then he disappeared which was a pretty cowardly way to finish an argument.
* * *
Lydia woke up in the bare bedroom and threw one arm out automatically for her phone. No messages. She scrolled through her emails while lying down. One had come through at 8.15am from Karen, letting her know that she was no longer the named contact for the oil company which kept the firm on retainer. It made sense, Lydia wasn’t in the office or available, after all, but it still stung. Karen had taken her on for work experience and then taken her on the following week. She had trained her and paid for the BTEC exam. Lydia had really thought she had found her place in the world.
And now here she was. In the forbidden land of Camberwell, site of tense family gatherings and stolen nights out as a rebellious teen. In Camberwell and doing a job for Uncle Charlie. A job in which she felt increasingly out of her depth. She had felt pretty good about her growing investigative skills, had even successfully completed a couple of small jobs on her own, but she had had the backing of the firm and Karen’s guidance. She wasn’t sure she was ready to be out on her own. She had thought that Charlie was making up a reason for her to come to London, not that there was a real problem to solve.
A cold stone of worry settled in Lydia’s stomach as she considered the possibility. What if Madeleine really was in trouble? It was almost eight days, now, since anybody had heard from her and, a quick check online confirmed, she still hadn’t popped up on any of her social media profiles. She knew that Charlie was persuasive but she was amazed that Madeleine’s parents, her aunt Daisy and uncle John, hadn’t insisted on calling the police.
She pulled on her favourite skinny jeans, a silky black top with a wide neck and added red lipstick. Grabbing her leather jacket, she headed downstairs and out through the cafe. It was mercifully empty but the smell of bleach was still thick in the air.
As Lydia locked the front door, she saw the ghost appear behind the glass. His face was pale like something at the bottom of a pool of water. He waved mournfully and Lydia felt absurdly bad for not shouting ‘goodbye’ to him. She raised a hand and mouthed ‘see you later’. It was official: Living at The Fork had made her lose the plot.
* * *
Lydia knew that she must have been to her Aunt Daisy and Uncle John’s house at some point during her childhood. The Crows all lived around Camberwell, apart from her own rebellious parents and the occasional ousted member who, sensibly enough moved far, far, away, and they had regular family events. Pot luck suppers, Christmas parties, New Year’s Eve parties, summer BBQs, gigantic birthday parties for their children. If it wasn’t for the magic and crime, they were like a supermarket advert. The odds were good that Lydia had climbed these front steps, clutching a parental hand and a wrapped gift, but ringing the doorbell now she couldn’t remember it.
She did remember the woman who opened the door, though. Aunt Daisy had always been perfectly presented with immaculate makeup and styled hair and the kind of house you definitely had to take your shoes off to enter. She looked exactly the same as Lydia’s memory, albeit ten years older. It hadn’t been that long, but worry had etched the lines in her face more deeply and all the makeup in the world couldn’t cover the shadows under her eyes or the red rims where she had obviously just been crying.
‘Lydia! Charles said you’d be visiting. Come in.’
The house which Madeleine had so recently vacated was a beautiful Georgian terrace with high ceilings, original features and all of the accoutrements of middle-class life. A range cooker in the large kitchen extension, with a big glass door which looked out onto decking complete wit
h expensive-looking rattan furniture in slate grey.
Daisy moved around the kitchen, gathering glasses and sparkling water from the fridge. She retrieved a lemon from a bowl on the counter and cut a couple of slices. She paused. ‘Did I ask you what you wanted?’
She hadn’t but Lydia nodded. ‘That looks great, thank you.’
‘John’s in his office.’ Her lips pressed inward as if she were suppressing words.
‘At home?’
She nodded. ‘He says he has to keep working. I don’t know how he can.’ She put the glasses onto the big dining table and sat next to Lydia. Seeming to remember that she was speaking to little Lydia, her cousin’s girl, she plastered on a simile of a smile. ‘Don’t mind me. Tell me all your news.’
Lydia took a sip of the cold water and then got out her notebook and pencil. ‘I’m here to help.’
Daisy blinked.
Lydia wondered how much Charlie had, in fact, said. ‘I’ve been working as an investigator, up in Scotland. I heard about Madeleine and came back to help.’ Not strictly true, but anything to soften her up. Lydia hated the thought, the cold sergeant major she remembered was no longer in residence. Her formidable Aunt Daisy had been tenderised by fear for her beloved child.
The Night Raven Page 6
