Dark Place to Hide (15 page)

‘Did you know that a bluebottle is made of two jewels joined together?’ Clara points out.

‘You’re right,’ Harper agrees. ‘It looks like mother of pearl.’

‘What’s “mother of pearl”?’

Harper delves into his pocket and pulls out his key ring. The silver disc has a mother-of-pearl butterfly in the centre. He shows it to Clara.

‘It’s pretty!’ she exclaims. Marion doesn’t think Clara’s seen this type of shell before. ‘Look, Mummy – it sparkles and changes colour.’

‘You’ve got her captivated now,’ says Marion. ‘She loves butterflies and anything that twinkles.’

Harper removes the keys from the metal coil, pockets them and holds the silver disc out on his palm. ‘I’d really like you to have it,’ he says to Clara.

‘Oh, no,’ Marion interjects. ‘It looks like it has sentimental value.’

‘Not really,’ he says. ‘It came out of a cracker last Christmas – I keep meaning to get another one.’ He turns back to Clara. ‘If you like it. You can put your house key on it, so it doesn’t get lost.’

‘Can I, Mummy?’ Clara queries, her mouth falling open. Her mother nods and Clara peels it carefully from his hand, as if it is a live creature she wants to protect.

She holds it up to the light, feels the weight of it, turns it over. ‘Why is it called “mother” of pearl and not just pearl? Do pearls have mothers?’

‘That’s a good question,’ he contemplates. ‘Pearls are like little beads that come out of a shell, but this comes from the
lining
of the shell…’

‘So, it kind of looks after the pearl, keeps it warm?’

‘Like a mother – yes, I suppose you’re right.’

She has another question for him. ‘Why are bluebottles pretty when all they do is poo on the breadboard?’

Harper is losing his way. He glances at Marion for help. She shrugs with a half-smile as if to say you’re on your own. ‘I really don’t know,’ he concludes.

‘Do you want to see my room?’ Clara declares.

‘Shall we ask your Mummy first?’ he says. ‘She might not feel like climbing the stairs just at the minute.’ Marion is warming to this polite and charming man almost as much as her daughter is.

She gets to her feet to see what the world feels like from up there. The kitchen seems to stay still; she’s doing a little better. ‘It might not be what you expect,’ she warns, as they head into the hall. ‘It’s not pink and cute.’

Clara’s room has a carpet of thick dried leaves covering the entire floor (offerings from last autumn) with pinecones crowded on the window ledge so you can’t see any paintwork at all. There are two walls painted in black matt paint and two in orange with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, mainly full of books and stuffed animals. In the corner is a fish tank with fairy lights around the top, next to the bunk bed. Clara sleeps on the top and keeps dressing-up clothes on the bottom. There is also a large chest by the wardrobe full of costumes. Clara used to change into five or six outfits a day – a fairy, a queen, a wizard – now she seems to wear just the red cape and carries the wicker basket around with her.

‘What an incredible place,’ Harper exclaims. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘As you’ve probably gathered, Clara loves fairy tales and make-believe. When she can, she spends the entire day in character,’ explains Marion. ‘She doesn’t like wearing shoes and draws sandals on her feet in felt pen to make it look like she’s wearing them.’ Harper laughs and Marion doesn’t know whether to feel full of pride or embarrassment at the creative impulses of her daughter.

He gravitates to the corner where there’s an antique mannequin wearing a ballet tutu. The salmon-coloured skirt looks like it’s made with overlapping chrysanthemum petals. He strokes it with care. ‘Her Granny bought that for her at an auction.’

‘Granny – what big teeth you have…’ Clara declares.

‘She’s a bit…confused at the moment.’

While Clara is busy pulling hats out of the cupboard, Marion whispers to him. ‘She got trapped for the night in Portchester Castle about three weeks ago,’ she says quickly. ‘Long story – she’s fine, but she’s got a bit obsessed with certain stories. I don’t really know why.’

Marion lets him examine the walls. There’s a totem pole, bagpipes, an Aborigine didgeridoo and a taxidermy deer’s head on one and masks of Shrek, Batman, Spiderman, Minnie Mouse and Homer Simpson on another. There is only one photograph in the room, on the bookshelf, of Clara and her father, after a skydive, his arm is around her. Both of them are smiling. The purple frame is studded with little diamonds. It hurts like a flame in Marion’s lungs to look at it.

‘Does Clara like animals?’ Harper asks.

Marion smiles. ‘See adores them, especially dogs.’

‘But not wolves,’ Clara chips in. ‘They’re very bad.’

‘Perhaps Clara might like to come and meet Frank one day. He’s a dog who’s staying with us at the moment. Very friendly. I think they’d get on well.’

‘Yes, please!’ shouts Clara. ‘I’m going to meet Frank.’

‘She’d love that,’ says Marion, gratefully and senses that this is a man who keeps his promises.

7 August – Eighth day missing

I’m tossing stale bread in the bin when the doorbell rings at 8am. For a moment I think it’s the police. They’ve found you. But it’s the surveyor from the insurance company. I’d forgotten he was coming early to check whether the cracks in the extension indicates subsidence. We noticed small cracks when we moved in, but the estate agent explained them away as ‘rustic charm’. At that time we weren’t ready to face anything detrimental – we’d fallen in love with the place and just wanted to buy it.

Mr Charles is tall and tired-looking, probably in his late thirties, wearing a long raincoat even though it’s a bright morning. It’s the same pale grey colour as his skin. He pulls a clipboard and camera from his briefcase. I offer him a drink, but he declines. He rattles a pen against his teeth and paces around all the downstairs rooms, sliding the curtains to one side with the biro, as if they are contaminated, and moving chairs with his foot.

He goes outside and steps into the flowerbed you filled with begonias, to get to the outside brickwork. I hear the snap as he breaks off leaves and stems with his clumsy feet. I swallow hard, fighting the irrational notion that he’s hurting you in some way. I want him to leave; his presence feels gloomy, like he’s about to sign a death warrant on our property.

He asks for the house deeds, which you brought down from the loft a few weeks ago. That was lucky. I wouldn’t have had a clue where to look. Then he sits at the kitchen table and opens his laptop. He types in figures, flicks through the deeds and makes notes.

‘The problem seems isolated to the section that was added in the 1970s to create a larger kitchen,’ he says. He has a pronounced Cornish accent and curls his ‘r’s. ‘Looks like there’s too much moisture under the back end of the property. That will need to be checked out – could be a faulty drain. I’ll forward my full report. You should be covered.’

That’s all I need to know.

My mobile rings while Mr Charles is back tapping walls and measuring cracks again. It’s Sgt Howis to say that no unidentified person meeting your description has been received by the local coroner’s office – thank God.

I put down the phone and don’t hear anything else; the surveyor carries on – something about woodworm in the beams and concerns about the sloping window frames. There’s only so much I can cope with at any one time. He leaves and I sink onto the sofa, exhausted, as if I’ve just had a vicious argument with him.

I find myself by the kettle and help myself to a sachet of camomile tea, because that’s what you often drink at this time in the morning. It makes me feel closer to you. It also leads me to question how well I know you. I didn’t think you were the kind of person who would leave me in the lurch like this. I think of you when we first met at the demo; fresh-faced, smelling of newly washed clothes. So pure and inviting.

Our first proper date followed only two days after the rally, when we went to a restaurant in Charlotte Street for a Keralan curry. We didn’t need any preliminary casual arrangements for coffee or drinks at a bar to test out whether we wanted to see each other more seriously. We knew.

During the course of the evening, I revealed to you my innermost feelings about my father.

‘There was no warning about him going. There were no fights or arguments – only concrete silences in every room.’

‘Tell me about it,’ you said, gripping my wrist. ‘If you want to…’

I took a quick swig of wine and waited for it to restore sufficient moisture to my mouth to continue. Then I told you everything in one long breath, trying not to sound sorry for myself. You had that effect on me right from the start, Dee, the ability to draw out the details without causing me to resort to my usual habit of making my life sound overly melodramatic. ‘One Sunday he packed up all his stuff.’ I put down my glass. ‘I thought at first it was a special trip we were all going on – then he said it was only for him – a West Ham training camp in Spain. He lied. It was mid-season and they had a string of local fixtures to play. He wanted to get out of the house without fireworks, that’s all. Mum sat in the kitchen the whole time. She barely moved, her chin in her hand, drinking cold tea, watching the birds on the feeder outside the window.’

You didn’t say a word. I was glad about that. Instead, you squeezed my hand and stayed still with me as I let the feelings breathe.

‘I hardly saw him after that. There were a handful of phone calls, the occasional present at birthdays or Christmas. Nothing consistent I could rely on. He met me a couple of times after school and took me places, but it wasn’t fun anymore. It felt strained, like it was a duty, a bother for him.

‘I didn’t know where he lived or who he was with. Mum refused to talk about him, so I stopped asking. After a few years I didn’t see him at all. He was out of our lives for good.’

Your eyes hadn’t strayed an inch from my face since I’d started.

‘I’d turned fifteen and I still missed him; I was confused, upset, sad. I felt like it was
my
fault; perhaps I wasn’t clever enough or I’d driven him away with my ineptitude at his beloved
game. I don’t know what brought it on – maybe it was something my mother said, or some comment about football on the news. Anyway, suddenly one Saturday I was furious with him and hated him for what he’d done. I threw away every precious gift he’d given me – football annuals, West Ham tops, caps, scarves.’

You didn’t nod with forced pity or ask questions; you were like a camera, zooming in closer and closer to get to the core. No one had ever listened to me with such sensitivity before.

‘That same day, I took the train to Dover. I walked along the chalk cliff-top with the box of news cuttings from football magazines and sports pages I’d kept since my father became famous. About two hundred carefully trimmed clippings over six years that mentioned Ronnie Penn –
my dad
– and his contribution to the West Ham team. I pulled the box out of my rucksack and turned it upside down on the grass.’

My voice stuttered to a croak. ‘Then I stood on the top of the cliff and painstakingly ripped every one into tiny shreds and tossed them all over the edge into the sea.’ I stopped abruptly, my jaw frozen, willing the tears to stay away. ‘I had nothing left of him after that.’ My voice fell to a whisper. ‘I didn’t know he’d be dead three months later. For years I felt like I’d brought on his death. I felt like they were his ashes I’d scattered that day. I’d done it with those scraps of paper, prematurely, and somehow brought on his heart attack.’

I bowed my head and stopped there – what I’d done next was unforgiveable – and nothing would make me tell you, or anyone else, about it. Ever. You’d run a mile.

You waited before speaking. ‘You must have been
so
angry.’ I could feel your fury bubbling under the surface of your voice. ‘You cared for him so much and only ever wanted him to be a proper dad. Then his health failed and he died.’ You sighed. ‘And you were left with all that guilt.’

I trailed my fingers along your delicate cheekbone. No one had ever genuinely rooted for me like this before. It was then that I said it. It came out of the blue, unconnected to anything. ‘I love you,’ I whispered. It was a ridiculous thing to say, so soon after we’d met, but you smiled, a soft, slow smile that built into a dazzling sunrise. ‘I know. It’s good isn’t it?’

The tea has gone cold by now. I tip it down the sink, but don’t have the will to make a fresh one. It’s only mid-morning and I have the whole day yawning ahead of me. Frank is asleep after his romp. I envy him. I wish I could lose most of the day like that. I was up just after 6am and decided fresh air was better than futile attempts to get back to sleep. I’m going to have to find constructive things to do, because sitting around waiting is driving me mad.

The post arrives and I put it on the kitchen table. The pile for you is growing, but there’s nothing that looks urgent. There’s a postcard from Neil – arriving after the fact. It has oily thumbprints on it and smells of coconut suntan oil. I slap my hand down on the counter. I almost forget. Our holiday. We’re due to go to Rome at the end of August. You’re coming back for that, aren’t you?

There’s a charity request from Oxfam and a reminder about the council tax. I’ve forgotten to pay it. See how I’m falling apart without you? I’m starting to feel like someone who doesn’t have a full grip on my life. What if this is it and I never see you again?

It’s thoughts like this that bulldoze me sideways – I can’t let them in; they’re too devastating.

There’s also a letter from the bank with your name on it. I’ve been waiting for this. I must open it. The police are no doubt checking your details, but I need to see when you last used your debit card. I rip open the seal and flash-read the statement down to the bottom, but it only goes to
the end of the month. You left on July 30
^th
and your debit card wasn’t used on 31
^st
. This is useless – it doesn’t tell me anything.

The transactions don’t include your credit card – that’s on a different statement, due in a couple of weeks. The details would show up on your online account, of course, but I don’t have your password. Would your mother know it? Would Alexa? And would they tell me if they did?