Kind of Cruel (37 page)

‘It’ll be embarrassing. And horrible. I don’t want you to have a fight with anyone.’

‘What, with a horrible woman who lied and said we couldn’t stay in her house?’ says Dinah. ‘
I
want to have a fight with her.’

‘Nobody’s going to be having any fights,’ I tell them, hoping it’s a promise I can keep. What if Veronique Coudert objects to my turning up at her home without warning? She’s unlikely to fling open the door and welcome me with open arms.

The snow is thickening, but still not settling. We’re okay; the roads are grey, not white. I switched off the radio on the way to the girls’ school, when a smug male voice told me not to make any unnecessary trips. I have never done anything more necessary than what I’m doing now. I wonder if this is how people who drown trying to save their dogs from icy water feel before they take the stupid risk that ends their lives, before I hear about them on the news and think, ‘What idiots’.

‘So . . . you want to find out why this woman doesn’t want you to stay in her house again?’ Nonie asks.

‘Right.’

‘But . . . so it hasn’t got anything to do with the fire last night, or Mum dying?’

I open my mouth to confirm that there is no connection, and find I can’t. The words and my tongue will not cooperate with one another. ‘I can’t answer that, Nones,’ I say. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘But how could it have anything to do with those things?’ she persists.

How could it? How could it?

The answer has something to do with five words: ‘Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel’. If I saw them at Little Orchard, and that’s why I said them to Ginny immediately after I’d been thinking about Christmas 2003; if Katharine Allen’s killer wrote them on a notepad in her flat before tearing off the page to take away; if my helping the police with their enquiries inspired someone to set fire to my house; if fire is the link between the attack on us last night and Sharon’s murder . . .

Three words
. Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel. It’s three words, not five.

‘Amber?’ says Dinah.

‘Mm?’

‘Why did you write down “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel”?’

A playwright and a mind-reader.

Can I explain without including Katharine Allen in the story? I don’t want Dinah and Nonie to have another murder in their heads.

‘Is it anything to do with us?’ Nonie asks. ‘If it is, you have to tell us.’

There’s a lay-by a few metres ahead. I pull over, slotting my car between two parked lorries. When I turn, I see fear on both girls’ faces and feel guilty for having shared so much of my uncertainty with them.
And now you’re going to do it again
. I stretch out my hand to them. Nonie squeezes it. Dinah inspects it, but doesn’t touch. ‘It’s absolutely nothing to do with you. I promise. There’s nothing for you to worry about. Everything’s going to be fine. “Kind, Cruel, Kind of Cruel” is something I remember seeing somewhere, but I can’t remember where. I thought if I wrote it down and kept looking at it, it might jog my memory, but it hasn’t. Not yet, anyway.’

‘Is it important?’ Nonie asks.

‘She doesn’t know,’ Dinah says in an over-the-top bored voice. ‘It might be.’

‘Right. It might be,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry, Dines. I know it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating for me too.’

She turns away from me, stares out of the window at the cars blurring past at sixty miles an hour. ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘Are we going to this Little Orchard place or not?’

There is no snow in Cobham, Surrey. It has rained, though; all the way from the motorway, the tree-lined roads and leafy lanes were heavy with moisture. Despite the cold, I opened the car window and breathed in wet air that smells different from the air in the Culver Valley.

Little Orchard has a new front door – dark red instead of black, with no stained glass panel set into the wood – but otherwise it looks the same as it did seven years ago. The difference is not in the house but in me. When I was here in 2003, I had no difficulty in accepting that both I and my surroundings were real, that we were part of the same scene. Today, I feel detached, as if I’ve been superimposed onto the landscape. No matter how many times I tell myself that I’m here, the knowledge refuses to sink in and become part of what I take for granted.

Here I am. Here we are.

Mine is not the only car on the gravel courtyard. There’s a blue Honda Accord parked close to the side of the house.

‘Is this it?’ Nonie asks. ‘It’s massive. Why did you and Luke need such a big house to stay in? Did you come here with friends?’

I resist the urge to be honest and say that I have no idea who I came here with. A group of labelled faces: Jo, Neil, Hilary, Kirsty, Ritchie, Sabina, Pam, Quentin. What did I know about any of them in 2003? What do I know about them now?

‘There’s a trampoline!’ In her enthusiasm, Dinah sounds like a child – unusually for her. ‘It’s one of those massive ones, like William and Barney’s!’

‘It looks like a Latin teacher’s,’ says Nonie.

‘The trampoline?’ Dinah sneers.

‘No, the house. A kind, old Latin teacher could live here. He’d have a big study with a coal fire in it and he’d wear slippers, and call pupils into his study and talk to them about their Latin homework.’

‘You’re just describing Mr McAndrew from seniors,’ Dinah says. ‘He doesn’t live here. How would he get to school?’

‘I imagine him living in a house like this,’ says Nonie. ‘With a cat. Definitely not a dog.’

‘Why not a dog?’ I can’t resist asking.

‘It’s a cat kind of house.’

‘What’s our house?’ I ask.

‘Burnt,’ says Dinah.

‘Not a pet house at all.’

‘Good answer, Nones,’ I say, relieved that I’m not preventing my home from being its true self by failing to fill it with terrapins or gerbils. ‘Right, girls, I want you both to wait here. I’ll be no more than—’

‘No!’ Dinah protests. ‘You’re not leaving us in the car, no way!’

‘We could go on the trampoline,’ Nonie suggests. ‘We’d take our shoes off.’

‘She’s going to say no,’ Dinah warns.

‘I am. You can go on William and Barney’s trampoline at the weekend, Nones, like you do every weekend.’

‘But I want to go on
this
one.’

‘Come on, you can come with me to the house, stretch your legs a bit.’

‘And listen to the fight!’ Dinah rubs her hands together in anticipation.

We step out of the car into the cold, damp night. It’s six o’clock and as dark as any midnight. I brush crumbs off the girls’ school uniforms, knowing they’re there even though I can’t see them. ‘What are you going to say?’ Nonie whispers as we approach Little Orchard’s front door.

‘Listen and you’ll find out,’ Dinah tells her, and I’m grateful to her for answering on my behalf. In my head, I am already talking to Veronique Coudert; I don’t want to be distracted by any other conversation.

I ring the doorbell and wait. It’s a big house. It might take her a while to get over to this side, if she’s right at the back.

‘If no one’s in, we can go on the trampoline,’ says Dinah.

‘Someone’s here,’ I say. ‘Whoever owns that car is here.’ I point to the Accord.

‘They might have left it there to make burglars think someone’s at home when they’re not,’ says Nonie.

I ring the bell again, but I’m too impatient to wait. ‘Let’s try round the back,’ I say. We used only the back door when we stayed in 2003. I don’t remember any of us discussing why this was, but it must have come from somewhere. Perhaps Little Orchard is one of those houses where the front door is never used. Jo must have known this; Veronique Coudert must have told her.

By ringing the front door bell, have I signalled to whoever is inside that I am a stranger – someone who doesn’t know Little Orchard well, someone not to be trusted?

Dinah and Nonie follow me round the back of the house. The sound of their footsteps on the gravel is comforting: soft irregular crunches behind me. Nothing here has changed. The garden is still multi-layered, a staircase shape, each step a perfectly rectangular lawn with a neat brick border. Lights are on in the kitchen and in one of the bedrooms.

My phone starts to ring in my coat pocket.
Shit
. It’ll be Luke. I don’t want to talk to him at the moment, but I know how worried he’ll be if I don’t answer. ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Now isn’t a good time.’

‘Amber, what’s going on? You’re taking the girls to Little Orchard? Why?’

‘We’re here now,’ I tell him. ‘Everything’s absolutely fine. I’ll talk to you later. Okay?’

Without waiting for an answer, I switch off my phone and toss it in my bag.

‘He’s not going to be satisfied with that,’ Dinah says matter-of-factly.

‘Probably not,’ I agree.

I knock on Little Orchard’s kitchen door. A black-haired middle-aged woman opens it. She’s wearing a blue and green patterned cotton caftan over faded jeans, pink flip-flops on her feet. Wound around her right hand is a yellow duster streaked with grey. She looks anxious at first. Then she sees the girls and smiles. ‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Can I help you?’ Her accent isn’t English.

‘Veronique Coudert?’

‘No. Who are you? I am not expecting tonight you come, anyone come. No one tell me. House is not ready.’ She is flustered. Spanish, I guess, maybe Portuguese.

‘I’m Amber Hewerdine. Is Veronique Coudert at home?’
Of course she isn’t. How many owners of holiday rental properties turn up to watch their cleaners change the bedding and empty the bins after each group of guests leaves?
‘Or . . . can you tell me where I can find her?’ If she says Paris, I might burst into tears. I’ve driven all the way from Rawndesley. My girls are standing behind me patiently, wishing they could bounce on a forbidden trampoline in the dark.
Please
. I’m praying that Little Orchard’s cleaner can sense how disastrous it would be for me to have to go home with no new information.

‘Veronique Coudert? Who is Veronique Coudert? I do not heard of her.’

‘The owner of Little Orchard,’ I say.

‘No.’ The cleaner shakes her head. ‘I do not know this name. This is not the house of Veronique Coudert. You are sure in the right place?’

‘This is Little Orchard,’ I say, feeling unreal, aware of Nonie and Dinah behind me wanting to ask a hundred questions each. ‘Are . . . is this your house?’

‘No, I am the maid . . . ah, how you say? The cleaner. I am Orianna.’

‘What’s the name of the owner?’

She takes a step back as I lunge forward unintentionally. My need for answers is making me clumsy. Behind Orianna, Little Orchard’s kitchen is the same as it was in 2003, except for the absence of Jo. I find myself staring at the wooden dresser. I can’t see if the nail is still there, sticking out of the back, if the key to the locked study is hanging where it hung seven years ago.

I could push Orianna out of the way, and . . .

No. No, I couldn’t. Is this why I brought the girls with me, so that I would have no choice but to behave responsibly? ‘What’s the owner’s name?’ I ask again.

‘I . . . who are you? Why are you ask these questions?’ Orianna continues to back away from me, though I’m standing still.

I tell her my name again. ‘I want one answer and then I’ll go,’ I say. ‘Who does this house belong to?’

‘I like that you leave now, please,’ she says.

‘What harm will it do to tell me the owner’s name?’

‘I do not know you. I have never seen you before.’ She shrugs. ‘You come here, I do not expect it . . .’

‘She’s scared,’ Nonie whispers.

Tough
. ‘You’re saying the name Veronique Coudert means nothing to you?’

She shakes her head. ‘I have to go, I am so sorry.’ The door closes in my face. I listen as she turns the key in the lock.

‘Do you still want to go on the trampoline?’ I ask the girls. If Orianna doesn’t like it, if she wants to get rid of us, all she has to do is answer my question. Or get the owner down here, even better.

‘We can’t,’ says Nonie, as if she’s the adult in charge of two children. ‘It’s not fair on that lady. She’s scared of us. She wants us to go.’