Dark Corners: A Novel (5 page)

As if saving time was one of his priorities. ‘You wouldn’t say that if you were a driver.’

Instead of the car, he took the tube, Willesden Green to Bond Street on the Jubilee Line. On a Tuesday morning, Oxford Street wasn’t crowded. He bought his socks and walked back towards Bond Street station. If half empty of people, Oxford Street carried a load of buses, so many that Tom fancied their weight would be too much for the road surface and any minute it would crack and sink under this scarlet mass of metal. Where did they all go to? Or come from? Why did they come here, queuing up like animals in a line heading for a water hole? He paused at a bus stop and saw that many buses, six and more if you counted the night ones, were scheduled to stop here. The first on the list was a number 6. He was standing in front of the timetable, which was on a pole and encased in glass, wuhen a bus came looming out of nowhere and bearing down on the bus stop, its light on. The number 6 was on the front of it, and so was its destination: Willesden.

That was the beginning of it, the start of his new occupation. He refused to call it a hobby. Climbing aboard, he waved his pass at the driver, who mimed a touching of this card in a plastic case on to a round yellow disc that squeaked when contact was made. It was easy, it was rather nice. He got a seat near the front and settled down to be driven home for the first time since he’d come to live in Willesden Green.

That was a year ago, and in that year he had ridden at least half of London’s buses, been everywhere and become an expert. This afternoon he was coming back from Barnes and in the Marylebone Road had changed on to his favourite number 6. A most interesting afternoon it had been, and outside the sun had come out brilliantly.

Most parents would be delighted to come home and find their grown-up daughter paying an unsolicited visit. Dot evidently was, plying this vision in jade green and rose pink with cups of tea, plates of cakes and now something that was obviously a gin and tonic. Since her late teens, when Tom had expected Lizzie to change, to grow up and behave, he had viewed his daughter with a sinking heart, only briefly pleased when she got into what she called ‘uni’. But her degree in media studies was the lowest grade possible while still remaining a BA. Gradually, as she moved from one pathetic job to another, ending up with the one she had now – teaching assistant, alternating with playground supervisor of after-school five-year-olds killing time until a parent came to collect them – he felt for his daughter what no father should feel: a kind of sorrowful contempt. He had sometimes heard parents say of their child that they loved her but didn’t like her, and wondered at this attitude. He no longer wondered; he knew. Walking into the house in Mamhead Drive, he asked himself what lie she would tell that evening, and how many justifications for her behaviour she would trot out.

Dot never seemed aware of her lies and prevarications. They had talked about it, of course they had, but such discussions usually ended with Dot saying that she couldn’t understand how a father could be so hard on his only child when that child was so devoted to him. As if to prove it, Lizzie got up and kissed him, letting her scented face rest for a moment against his cheek.

Believing he had chosen a subject for conversation unlikely to lead to lying, exaggeration or fantasising, Tom said that Stacey’s death had been a sad business. ‘I remember her of course from when she was a child in the neighbourhood. You and she used to walk to school together. You and Stacey were good friends.’ His wife brought him a glass of wine. ‘You’ll miss her.’

‘Oh yes, I do,’ Lizzie said. ‘So much. You don’t know how much I wish I hadn’t been in her flat and found the body. I don’t think I could ever set foot in there again.’

‘I don’t see why you should have to,’ said Tom.

‘Oh no, I don’t have to. I shan’t.’

She was lying. He could always tell. He could tell by the tone of her voice and the look on her face, a combination of piety and virtue. They sat down to supper, Lizzie picking delicately at the mushroom omelette that was one of her mother’s specialities. Dot wanted to know who owned Stacey’s flat now and Lizzie said she had no idea. She wished she did. It was a lovely flat, luxurious and very spacious.

‘That’s an estate agent’s word,’ said Tom.

‘I couldn’t think of another one. What would you say?’

‘Roomy,’ said Tom.

Lizzie went into detail about how beautiful the flat was, the carpets, the sleek black and white furniture, the Audubon bird drawings, and this time Tom knew she wasn’t lying. Lizzie’s love of and knowledge of bird artists and birds themselves was her only intellectual interest. He thought – he couldn’t help himself – about the place in Kilburn she lived in and on which he paid half the rent. Nobody would call it beautiful or luxurious, but she was the sole occupant, which was more than you could say for most of her friends, people who shared or had just one room or still lived at home with their parents. He felt hard done by, a state Lizzie’s presence usually left him in. She was telling her mother about the shopping spree in Knightsbridge she had been on that had resulted in the purchase of the green suit among other garments. He thought of the portion of her rent he paid, and then, looking at her face, knew that the Knightsbridge story was also a lie and she had spent nothing.

Stacey’s flat in Pinetree Court was in darkness when Lizzie got back. She had left the heating on low, and it was very pleasant to be lapped in warmth. She turned on the television to a police drama and went into the bedroom, where she took off the green suit and wrapped herself in the dark blue silk dressing gown she found in Stacey’s cupboard. Another cupboard, in the kitchen this time, was well stocked with all kinds of wines and spirits. Lizzie made herself a Tequila Sunrise and settled down in front of the screen with her golden drink.

‘
IS EVERYTHING ALL
right between you and Miss Townsend?’ said Dermot, passing Carl outside his bedroom door the next morning.

Carl thought this a fearful impertinence. ‘Of course it is. Why do you ask?’

‘Just being friendly. To tell you the truth, I thought you and she would have put things on a more permanent level by now.’

‘What does that mean?’

Dermot smiled, baring his awful teeth. ‘Well, once it would have meant marriage, wouldn’t it? More like getting engaged these days.’

Carl thought quickly. It wouldn’t do to make an enemy of Dermot. ‘It takes two to make an engagement,’ he said rather gruffly.

Shaking his head, Dermot said, ‘I hope I haven’t upset you. I wouldn’t do that for the world. The way Miss Townsend looks at you, anyone could tell she’s crazy about you.’ He hesitated, then, ‘How about a coffee? Your place or mine?’

‘I’ll make the coffee,’ said Carl, wishing he had said no. ‘You won’t mind instant?’

‘To be perfectly honest with you, I prefer it.’

When Dermot had finally drunk his coffee and gone back upstairs, Carl decided that now was the time to tell Nicola about Stacey. It was Saturday, and she was spending the weekend with her former flatmates. He tried the landline, but there was no reply. Strangely, he couldn’t bring himself to try her mobile number. Was it because she would almost certainly answer it?

He needed to talk to Nicola about Stacey, but for some reason, he couldn’t. At least not on the telephone. The last time he had gone to dinner with his mother, her friends Jane Porteus and Desmond Jones had been there, and as soon as he came in Jane had begun talking about Stacey and her horrible death. It would be the same with Nicola.

He asked himself why he didn’t want to talk about Stacey. He had done nothing wrong; in fact he had been doing her a favour as far as he knew. It wasn’t his fault that she had taken an overdose of the pills. She could have checked them on the web. The label had advised using care. All he had done was give her – well, sell her – fifty slimming pills that in some circumstances, for some people, caused nasty symptoms. ‘And death,’ an inner voice reminded him. Death could be caused by taking DNP. He had by this time been to several dinitrophenol websites, which all mentioned death as a possible result of taking the stuff. Not inevitable, of course, but possible. He had to accept that, painful though it was.

Really, the whole situation was his father’s fault. He had died after a heart attack, and one of the websites had said DNP could damage the heart. Could it be …? No, Wilfred had been an old man, and old men died from heart attacks. Young women didn’t.

Carl jumped suddenly out of his chair. It was a fine day, another fine day after many in this month of June, and he would go out, walk in the sunshine, think about
Sacred Spirits
and how best to get into it. He had made a false start with this book, and he must begin again. He must find the kind of creative inspiration he had felt when writing
Death’s Door.

He made his way through the little streets of St John’s Wood, then turned down Lisson Grove. The June sunshine fell gently on his face, the kind of warmth sunshine should always bestow; not a punishing heat or a mildness spoilt by the wind, but steady and promising a permanence. He thought, why can’t I just appreciate things as they come? Why can’t I enjoy the moment? I have done nothing wrong. But that inner voice said to him, ‘You sold those pills to that girl and you never emphasised to her that they had side effects. You never even told her to google them. You wanted the money. You didn’t warn her.’

Nothing, he told himself as he let himself back into his house. There is nothing to be done. Put it out of your mind. Nothing will bring her back. Sit down at that computer and write something. Anything.

There must have been close to thirty children in the play centre that afternoon, but on a fine day like this it wasn’t so bad looking after kids. Only another half-hour to go and then Lizzie could get back to the beautiful flat in Primrose Hill Road. The playground had been quite a big area when she was a child herself, but over the years it had become smaller as more and more children reached school age, more and more classrooms were needed, as well as a bigger gym and a science lab, though what little kids needed a lab for she didn’t know. Now the children actually bumped into each other running about. Lizzie wasn’t supposed to have a whistle for the little ones, but she had and blew it often, trying to bring them to heel. Like dogs, said her mother, who didn’t approve.

It was worse when it rained and the children had to stay indoors. Another thing Lizzie wasn’t supposed to do was feed them with anything but their tea, which consisted of wholemeal bread and Marmite, and apples. Lizzie gave them crisps and sweets called star fruits to shut them up. It cost her a fortune, but it was worth it, especially now she had no gas or electricity to pay for.

On the dot of five thirty, when the parents would start coming for them, she shooed them indoors and counted them. She dreaded one going missing. Not because she cared – if anything, she disliked children – but because of the trouble there would be and the loss of her job. But they were all there today, and they all wanted to get home. So did Lizzie.

It wasn’t far to Primrose Hill Road from West End Lane, just a short walk along Adelaide Road, and halfway along she sat down on a seat, tore up the four slices of wholemeal bread she had taken from the children’s snacks and scattered the crumbs on the pavement. Pigeons appeared at once and began gobbling up the bread. People said pigeons were grey, but Lizzie knew better. One was red and green, another was silver with a double streak of snowy white, and a third, perhaps the handsomest, jet black with a metallic emerald sheen to its feathers.

By this time, she had got into Stacey’s habit of keeping a set of keys in the recycling cupboard, not because she expected someone else to try to gain entry in her absence – there was no one – but because she was inclined to forget things and knew very well that if she inadvertently shut herself out of Stacey’s flat, she would have no means of getting back inside. Not for her the services of a locksmith when she couldn’t identify herself as the owner or legal occupant of the flat. No relative had come forward as far as she knew, no other friend who might possess a key. In putting the spare set in the recycling cupboard, in the hollow under the loose brick in the floor, Lizzie calculated she was safe. The only alternative she could think of was to carry the keys with her at all times, maybe on a chain round her neck. She disliked the idea because it spoilt her look when wearing Stacey’s clothes.

Una Martin wasn’t much of a cook. She relied on smoked salmon and the kind of pasta dishes you bought ready-made and just had to put in the microwave. Her son didn’t notice what he ate and seemed to be glad of anything he got. Una assumed that he and Nicola lived on ready meals and takeaways.

‘I’ve been wondering,’ she said as she and Carl began on their first course (there was no second), ‘who’s going to get poor Stacey’s flat? I mean, what happens to property if it’s not left to anyone and no one comes forward to claim it?’

‘It goes to the Crown,’ Carl said, guessing. He didn’t really know.

‘I’ve never been in her flat,’ Una continued. ‘I expect it’s very nice.’

‘Yes, it is.’ Carl helped himself to more pasta. ‘I’ve been a few times.’

‘Now if only you’d married her, it would be yours,’ said his mother.

Carl sighed. ‘I don’t need a flat. I’ve got a nice house. There was no prospect of me marrying her. You got this crazy idea into your head and I don’t know where it came from. Stacey was just a friend.’

‘There’s no such thing as a man and a woman just being friends.’

‘Is there any more wine?’ Carl asked.

No answer was forthcoming.

‘There was an aunt,’ he said, remembering.

‘What on earth do you mean, darling, there was an aunt?’

‘Stacey Warren had an aunt.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She lived with her after her parents died.’

‘So you’re saying that this aunt, whoever she is, would inherit that beautiful flat? What’s her name? Where does she live?’