The Red Room (33 page)

feeling sorry for you as well as Daisy and
Lianne and Philippa and Michael."
"Help is what I need." Her voice was a
wail. "Help is what I've always needed."

Oban was waiting outside in the car park. There
was a fierce cold autumn wind and I closed
my eyes and took it full in the face. I
wanted it to blow the last hour out of me. He
smiled at me.
"Was it like you said it was going to be?" he
asked. "Was she presenting herself as one 577
of Gabriel Teale's victims as well?"
"Something like that."
"You think she'll get away with it?"
"Not if I have anything to do with it," I said, and
shivered. My eyes filled with tears.
The light was failing by the time Oban dropped
me off at the top of my street, but even from a
distance I knew who it was standing at my door.
He was wearing a long coat; his hands were thrust
into his pockets; his shoulders were hunched. He
looked as if he was standing on a crag and cold
winds were blowing round him.
I stopped dead, andfora moment I considered
running away. Or running toward him and putting
my arms around his grim figure. Of course, I
did neither. I walked as casually as I could up
the pavement, and when he finally heard me and turned
round, I managed a smile.
"I've just come from Salton Hill," I said.
"Oh," he said, pulling a face. "Her."
"Yes."
He gave a grunt and pushed his hands deep
into his pockets. "At least there won't be any
more of his crappy plays," he said, shoving his hands
even deeper in his pockets.
"I didn't know you'd seen any of them."
"I didn't need to." There was a silence.
Will looked as if he had been assigned to some
sort of compulsory sentry duty outside my
flat. He gave a sniff. "I suppose
you're expecting me to congratulate you."
"Well ..."
"I suppose you want me to go on about how you
were right and everybody else in the world including me was
wrong. Is that it? Give you a fucking medal or
something."
I giggled then. "You're welcome," I said.
I pushed open the door and kicked aside a
bundle of mail lying on the mat. "Do you want
to come in?" He hesitated. "Glass of wine?
Beer? Come on."
He followed me up the stairs. In the
kitchen, I handed him a bottle of beer from the
fridge and poured myself a glass of red wine. I
closed the curtains, then lit a candle and put it
on the table between us. He took a sip. "How's
your neck?" he asked. "Or whatever other bit
of you he ..."
"Fine," I said. I looked at his 579
face in the shadowy, shifting light. I knew he
wouldn't change. And I knew what it would be like:
me hoping all the time for something more, always asking for
something he couldn't give.
"Will ..." I began.
"Please," he said then. He shut his eyes
for a moment. "Please." I wondered whom he was
pleading with. It no longer felt as if he was
talking to me, but to someone inside his head.
I leaned across the table and put a hand on his
arm. It was like touching a steel girder. I wanted
to take his face in my hands and kiss him till
he kissed me back. I wanted him to hold
me, tight. If he did that, I didn't stand a
chance. But he didn't move, although his eyes were
open again.
"It's not fair of you," I said at last.
"No, I guess not." He tipped back the
last of his beer and stood up, the chair scraping
on the floor. He looked around. "Are you moving
out of the area?"
"Why should I?"
"I don't know," he said. "Bad
associations. Trauma."
I shook my head. "What bad
associations?" I said. "I'm staying."
"That's good," he said, then caught himself. "I
mean, it's an interesting area. In some ways."
"That's what I think."
"Good." He lowered his head and kissed me on
my cheek. I felt his breath; his stubble. For a
moment we stood like that, close to each other in the
candlelight. Then he drew back.
"You did well," he said. "I told you that,
didn't I?"
"Not in those words."
"I can't believe you going in like that, on your
own," he said. "You should look after yourself more."
And then he was going, his coat flapping behind him,
and I stood where I was and watched him leave.

47

I was helping Julie to pack. It was a friendly
but melancholy kind of business, made more so by the
soft autumnal weather outside my windows. The
beech and chestnut trees were yellow and gold and
russet-red now, and a warm wind gusted through their
branches, scattering leaves in radiant showers.
Drifts of brown leaves piled up in 581
the courtyard and occasionally children crunched into them,
wearing boots and shouting with glee. The sun shone
through a thin gauze of clouds. Summer, which had
never really arrived, was leaving. Julie was leaving.
I was staying behind.
"Here, this is yours." She chucked over a
lavender-colored top, which I'd hardly ever
worn. "And this." A flimsy cardigan winged
across the room, the arms flapping. "God, I
didn't realize how much of your stuff I'd
borrowed over the months. I'm like a magpie."
She giggled. Her eyes were bright and she glowed with
energy and excitement.
We had been at it all morning, in an
aimless kind of way, stopping every half-hour or so
for tea. We were separating her possessions
into piles: one pile for the things she was going to take
with her; one for the stuff she wanted to store for when
she returned; one for the rubbish bin or the charity
shop or me. This third pile was by far the biggest
-comshe was on a binge of freeing herself of
possessions, throwing away all her baggage.
She slung a pair of strappy black shoes
on top of a violently yellow mac that she'd
bought only a few weeks ago, when she was fed
up with the rain. She added some beige cotton
trousers that she said made her bottom look a
funny shape, a jacket that she'd never really
liked, three or four sweatshirts, tights with
ladders, a beaded bag, a black skirt, bought
for her supposed office job, which she picked up
between finger and thumb as if it smelled bad, a
lime-green T-shirt, a purple
roll-necked jersey. "Here. Your red dress,"
she said, unhooking it from the hanger and passing it
across.
"Keep it."
"What? Don't be stupid. It's yours and you
look beautiful in it."
"I'd like you to have it."
"It's not exactly practical." She
looked tempted, though, and stroked it as if it were
alive.
"Stuff it in the bottom of your rucksack.
It hardly weighs anything."
"What if it gets ruined, or I lose it?"
"It's yours to lose or ruin. Go on, you're
throwing things away as if there was no tomorrow. Let me
have a turn."
"OK." She leaned across and kissed 583
my cheek. "Every time I wear it I'll think of
you."
"Do that." I was alarmed to find there were tears in
my eyes, and busied myself with uselessly refolding
items of clothing.
"You've been lovely."
"Hardly. I've been anti-social and
grumpy half the time, and neurotic the other
half."
"Talking about grumpy, what's happening with
Will?"
"Nothing."
"You mean it's over?"
"I don't know. "Over" is a big word,
though. I've hardly ever ended anything in my
life, even when I wanted to. So perhaps I'm
letting him do the ending, by not contacting me. Or
perhaps he will contact me and then--I don't know.
I don't know what I will do. But he's not good for
me. He's too harsh, like a rock I was always
going to cut myself on."
"You're probably right. You'll meet someone
else soon, you'll see."
"What about these shorts?"
"Chuck them. Your bruise has faded, you
know. It's gone yellow and brown, not that
extraordinary purple any longer. Does it still
hurt?"
"Not much--a bit sore." I touched it
lightly.
"Strange summer."
"You can say that again. It all feels unreal
now, like a story that happened to someone else."
"Do you ever feel you're playing at being
grown-up?"
I sat back on my haunches and picked up
an electric-blue vest-top. "You should take
this."
"I mean, I don't feel grown-up at
all--I feel as if I was just a step away from
when I was a child. But, then, I don't live in a
very grown-up way, do I? Drifting around, not
settling, not having a career or long-term
prospects, wearing clothes for teenagers--like that
top," she added, picking up the blue vest and
adding it to her to-take pile. "But you've got this
amazing proper job, and a flat that looks
light-years away from your student days--you even
give papers at conferences, for God's sake.
But is that how you feel inside, as 585
well?"
"No." I hurled a pair of silk
knickers at her and she stuffed them into her
backpack. "I feel as if it's all a
charade that I'm hiding behind. But we all feel like
that. That everyone else is different, and sorted out
in a way we'll never be. If we live to a
hundred we'll probably feel like that. When
we're on our deathbed we'll still be waiting
to feel grown-up."
"Maybe." She grinned across at me. "But
I really am like that. That's why I'm running
away again. I don't like real life."
"Who said I did?"
She looked across at me, a mermaid in a
bright sea of clothes. "You should come with me, then."
"It's too late."
"It's never too late."
"I don't believe that."
The phone rang.
"I'll get it," said Julie, clambering
to her feet. "You put the kettle on."
But it was for me. "The police," she mouthed,
handing over the receiver with a shrug.
"Kit Quinn?"
"Speaking."
"DCI Oban told me to call you.
Apparently a Mrs. Dear wants to get in
touch with you."
"Mrs. Dear? I've never heard of her."
"Something about her daughter, Philippa
Burton."
"Pam Vere?"
"Anyway, she wants to talk to you."
"OK, give me her number, then."
"She probably wants me to tell her about the
Teales," I said, after I'd put the phone
down. "Though Oban went and visited Jeremy
Burton straight away. There's nothing left
to say."
"Poor woman."
"It's the funeral the day after tomorrow--finally.
Philippa was her only child. She's just got
Emily now."
"Are you going?"
"Probably. Though it'll be crowded out."
"I'll be in the air. Far away."
"I just wish I knew why she had to die. I
feel it's all unfinished still. It haunts me and
it must haunt them a hundred, a thousand 587
times more--not knowing anything at all."

Pam Vere was clipped and strained on the
phone. She wanted to meet before the funeral, she
said. Today, if possible. She was free anytime.
I grimaced across at Julie, and said that I could
be at her house in half an hour.
"I'd rather meet outside."
"All right." I glanced at the uncertain
skies. "How about the Heath--that's near you,
isn't it?"
"I thought we could meet by the canal."
"The canal?"
"Where the girl was killed."
"Lianne." I hated the way nobody
called her by her chosen name. Even in the papers,
she was always "the homeless girl," the "drifter."
And I hated the way adjectives were applied
by an unimaginative press: Philippa was
tragic, Lianne was merely sad.
"Yes. Can we meet there?"
I tried not to show my surprise. "If that's
what you want."
It was trying to rain by the time I reached the steps
leading down to the canal. Occasional large drops
splashed into the water, spreading ripples. It
seemed ominous, except, of course, what I
dreaded had already happened and was in the past.
Pam Vere was waiting, standing quite still in her scarf
and camel-hair coat. She didn't smile, but
she held out her hand as I came toward her. Her
grip was firm and steady. Her eyes were steady
too, in her chalky face. I noticed that for
once she'd applied her makeup carelessly--there
was a pale smudge of powder on the side of her
nose and a faint fleck of mascara on one of her
wrinkled and hooded eyelids. "Thank you for
coming," she said formally.
"I wanted to," I said.
"You're coming to the funeral."
"Of course."
"There was something else I wanted to say to you.
I couldn't say it there."
She looked around us, at the rash of nettles,
the mucky path dotted with crisp packets, the
slimy water spotted with rain. "Was it here?"
"By the bridge," I said, pointing.
"Did she suffer?"
That wasn't what I had been 589
expecting and it took me a moment to gather my
thoughts. "I don't think so. They weren't serial
killers, Mrs. Vere, they weren't like the
Wests. They didn't enjoy killing. They would have
got it over as quickly as possible. Maybe the
worst thing for your daughter would have been knowing that she
had left Emily at risk."
She cleared her throat. "I meant the other
girl."
I gazed at her. "Who? Lianne?"
"Yes." She held my eyes. "Would it have
been painful?"
"No," I said. "I think it was very sudden."
Mrs. Vere nodded and then said, in a voice that
had become husky, "I heard they stabbed her
all over."
"That was after she died."
"Poor girl." A raindrop splashed onto
her cheek and ran down it, toward her mouth. She
didn't wipe it away.
"Yes," I said, wondering why Pam Vere
wanted to stand in the rain with me by a canal.
She turned her back on me and stood looking
out over the water. "Philippa was a good girl,"
she said. "Maybe we put too much pressure
on her--she was our only child, you know. Sometimes now
when I look at photographs of the three of us,
I think how little and single she seemed between us.
Two adults and one little child. But then when she was
eleven her father died, of course, and it was just her and
me. And she was still a good girl, always neat, always
thinking of other people, always helpful. Too helpful,
perhaps. She wasn't unpopular, but she didn't
have many friends when she was little. She liked playing
by herself, with her blessed doll. Or being with me,
making cakes and shopping and tidying the house. She
never gave me any trouble.
"And she was the same at school. A hard worker
-comt's what school reports always said. Nothing
brilliant, but a hard worker, a pleasure
to teach. Always did her homework as soon as she
got back from school. Good as gold. She would
sit at the kitchen table and eat hot buttered
toast and Marmite and then she would do her homework,
in blue ink, with her neat handwriting, her looping
ally. I can see her now, in her navy blue
uniform, with her heels tucked up on the bar of the
chair and her brow furrowed, blotting her work after
each line. Or coloring in her maps for
geography. She liked doing that, shading 591
the coastline blue and the forests green, drawing
lines of contour.
"I got her schoolwork out of the chest a few
days ago and looked through it all, all the
exercise books with the subjects written across the
top right-hand corner, with a ruled line under her name
and class. It seems like yesterday. There were things
I could remember her doing, like the drawings of herself
she did when she was tiny, with scribbled yellow
hair and a pink semi-circle mouth. Children always
draw themselves smiling, don't they, although
Philippa wasn't a great smiler, you know.
Then, later, the pencil diagrams of flowers, with
their pistils and stamens. Planets. The six
wives of Henry VIII. Algebra. Je
m'appelle Philippa Vere et j'ai
onze ans." Pam Vere's French accent was
impeccable. "And there were her school diaries. They
used to write diaries on a Monday morning--
what I did at the weekend, that type of thing, you
know?" I nodded. I didn't want to say
anything that might stop her. "And I read through them.
And do you know what? I was in all of them. She
always wrote about what she did with Mummy.
Mummy and me went to the shops, Mummy and me
went to the playground, Mummy got me a kitten
and its name is Blackie, Mummy took me to the
museum. I suddenly realized that there was almost
nobody else in her diaries except me and
her. I didn't know how solitary she was until
I read those entries. She never complained."
She turned fully to face me. "You're
asking yourself why on earth I am telling you all of
this, aren't you?"
"You need to say it to someone."
"I'm an old woman now. Oh, I'm not
really old, I know. I'm only in my
sixties and I could live for another thirty
years. But I feel old now. I feel twice
as old as I did a year ago. You don't have
children, do you?"
"No."
"Do you have a mother still?"
"No. My mother died when I was very young."
"That's why, then."
"Why what?"
"Why it was you I wanted to talk to. She was
even a good girl when she was a teenager. She
made a few more friends, sometimes she went out on a
Saturday night. She would have a few 593
drinks, not many. She didn't smoke. She
didn't take drugs. She was very pretty but she
didn't realize it and I think that meant that other
people didn't really notice how pretty she was.
She wasn't showy or pushy or flirtatious.
I always thought she was the loveliest girl I
knew, but then I was her mother, so I would think that,
wouldn't I? And fourteen- and fifteen- and
sixteen-year-old boys don't look
properly, do they? I was thankful for that--I always
told her not to worry about what her friends were up
to, she had plenty of time. Time." She smiled
grimly. "She didn't have plenty of it, after
all, did she?" She came to an abrupt
halt.
"Then what?" I asked, quietly.
"Then she met someone. A boy. Well, a
man, really, older than her. She was only
fourteen when she met him. He looked at her
properly. Suddenly she no longer seemed like a
young girl, she was on the verge of womanhood.
I just thought she was growing up. I find it hard
to believe now, but I really didn't have any
idea what was going on. I only found out about it
afterwards. She was so innocent, my quiet little
daughter. She thought that she was in love with him. And
that he was in love with her, more to the point. If I
had realized at the time, I could have warned her."
She smiled at me. "You see now, I'm not
just talking to you like this because I need to talk to someone
about Philippa. A secret is a terrible thing.
The only way to stop it being terrible is to tell
it, but you mustn't. He left her, of course, it
only lasted a few weeks. And she was
heartbroken, though I still knew nothing."
She turned back to the canal once more, then
said: "And pregnant."
I walked over to where she was and stood beside her,
looking into the depths where Doll's fish lurked.
"She had the baby?"
"I found out that she was pregnant when she was
twenty-seven weeks and five days gone. So she
had the baby. It was all done very secretly. I
made sure of that. Nobody knew, just
Philippa and me."
"A girl?"
"Yes. A girl who would have been eighteen a
few months ago."
"Lianne?" She had been older than I'd
thought, then. 595
"I told the school Philippa had glandular
fever. We went away to France together while she
waited. She was very quiet, as if she was in
shock, but she did what I said. There wasn't
really any choice. They took the baby away
almost at once. Philippa wanted to hold
it--her--first. She cried and sobbed and begged. She
went almost mad. But I wouldn't let her. I
didn't want her to get attached. She couldn't
have a child, for God's sake, she was only a child
herself. I wanted her to have a life, a husband,
all the things I'd been planning for her. So I
wouldn't let her hold the baby. She cried
solidly for two days, you've never seen so many
tears, it was like a dam bursting, all the tears
she'd been too eager and helpful to cry all her
life. And then she seemed to pull herself together.
Her milk dried up, her tummy gradually got
flat again. She went back to school and did her
exams and went on to sixth-form college. She
never talked about it again."
"Mrs. Vere ..."
"I held the baby, though. Tiny, shriveled,
red thing with baggy skin and gummy blue eyes.
She put her fist round my finger and wouldn't let
it go, as though she knew."
"Knew?"
"That I was her grandmother. Her family. Her
home. Her last chance. I unpinned her strong
little fingers one by one and handed her over."
"And then she was taken away for adoption?"
"Adoption, yes, I suppose so. I
didn't want Philippa to know. I thought it was
best if the door was shut firmly on the whole
episode. Of course, she would have been able to find
out where she really came from five months ago, when
she turned eighteen."
"Those phone calls."
"I didn't know at first, of course, not
until then, when I heard about the calls, the
calls between Philippa and ... and her. I
wasn't withholding evidence. I suppose you'd
say that I didn't want to know. But for eighteen
years not a week's gone by when I haven't thought
about that little baby gripping my finger and staring at
me. And I wonder if an hour went by without
Philippa remembering, too. We never
spoke. Not even after Emily, we never told
each other what we felt."
She looked at me at last. "That's 597
why I wanted to see you, to know if my
granddaughter suffered."
So this whole sad tale had been about a
daughter looking for her mother, a mother searching for her
daughter.
"I wonder if they ever found each other, before
they were killed," I said at last.
"Sometimes I comfort myself by imagining that they did.
That Philippa was allowed to hug and hold her
baby at last. But we'll never know, will we?"
"No. We'll never know."
We were just about to part when Pam Vere put her
hand on my sleeve. "I was going to ask," she
said, "whether it might be possible for my
granddaughter to be buried in the same grave as
my daughter. Do you think it might be?"
"Lianne was cremated," I said. "And her
ashes were scattered."
"Oh, I see," said Pam. "Well, that's
that, then."