Poppy Day (16 page)

Miles looked at her for a second. ‘Thanks for that, Poppy Day.’

‘You are welcome, Miles Varrasso.’

‘Here’s my card. I want you to trust me, Poppy.’

‘I trust you.’

He smiled. ‘Call me if you need anything or want to discuss anything, anything at all.’

‘Will do, thanks, Miles.’

As they stood to leave, he turned to Poppy. ‘They would have killed him by now, Poppy, if they were going to, so don’t you worry, you will get him back safe and sound.’

She smiled at his superior knowledge; really, really wanting to believe him and, at that point, she probably did.

P
OPPY THOUGHT SHE
was dreaming of the loud thuds that filled her head – she wasn’t. It was the sound of fists hammering on the front door. Jenna shouted through the letter box, ‘Oh my God, Poppy! Open the door! It’s me!’

Her heart pounded as she ran up the hallway in her pyjamas, shaking off the last fog of sleep, whilst trying to negotiate the moving armholes of her dressing gown. She unlocked the bolt and twisted the lock. ‘Jesus, Jen! What’s the matter?’

‘Oh my God, Poppy!’ Jenna didn’t say anything else, but instead unfurled the red-topped newspaper, holding it three inches from her friend’s face before doubling over with hands on hips trying to regain her breath.

Poppy was looking at her own face, almost actual size, on the front page!

Then the print got smaller.

On it went, detailing what had happened to Martin, how he had been taken and revealing the full horror of Aaron’s death. It made her think of his wife, his little boy. They didn’t need to know this stuff.

She looked at Jenna’s shocked face.

‘Oh my God, Poppy!’

‘Yes, you’ve already said that, Jen.’

‘Now everyone will know and you won’t get a moment’s peace! I’m worried about you, more than I was before, and let me tell you, that was a lot.’

Poppy smiled, ‘I’m sure no one will pay any attention to it, Jen, people are too busy with their own lives.’

They were interrupted by the broken bell. Poppy pulled the dressing gown taut around her body. It was Rob. ‘Morning, Rob.’

‘Poppy!’ His tone was sharp.

‘What?’

He looked at her with an expression of disappointment. She knew in that split-second what it was like to be a daughter with a dad, and what it felt like to let that dad down. She considered singing her pre-prepared hymn, but decided that it probably wouldn’t help the situation.

‘I take it you’ve seen the article?’ His tone was clipped.

‘Some of it yes, just now.’

‘When did you speak to him?’

‘Yesterday, yesterday morning.’

‘Without speaking to me first?’

‘I… I didn’t…’

He shook his head.

Poppy felt terrible, like a naughty child that has been caught crayoning on the wall.

‘No, Poppy, you’re right, you didn’t.’ He scanned the article, hoping to find something that he had missed, something misconstrued. ‘Is this accurate, Poppy? Is this what you said to him?’

She looked away briefly. ‘Yes, pretty much. I mean it’s what I said, but not necessarily
how
I said it, if that makes any sense.’

Rob didn’t speak.

‘I thought it was a good idea, Rob.’

‘You thought what was a good idea?’

‘To get publicity. I was thinking about Terry Waite and that other one who came out with the big beard, whose girlfriend chucked him.’ She repeated Jenna’s dire summing up of the event.

Rob shook his head again.

She wished he would stop doing it; it made her feel foolish, like she’d missed the point, or was going outside of the plan.

He closed his eyes and raked at his moustache with his fingers. ‘Poppy, promise me that you will not talk to anyone or do anything like this again without checking with me, with us first, OK?’

She nodded without speaking, without looking at him, because she didn’t want to lie to him and couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure that she could keep that promise.

Jenna shrieked, jolting Poppy into reality with both her volume and message, ‘Oh shit, Poppy! You can’t let Dorothea see this!’

‘Shit! You are right, Jen!’

Poppy ran into the bathroom to scoop up jeans and a
sweatshirt
that were waiting to be hurled into the washing machine and shoved them on. She was still wearing slippers but it was going to have to do. ‘I’m sorry, Rob. I need to go and make sure that my nan doesn’t see this. You can wait here if you like, I won’t be long.’

‘I’ll wait here for you.’ He shook his head in a ‘you-
have-really
-let-me-down’ kind of way.

Once again, he sounded and felt like her dad, or how she imagined her dad to sound, when he wasn’t very happy with her. For some reason this made her smile; it felt quite nice.

She ran to The Unpopulars, arriving in a matter of minutes. Poppy knew there was little chance of her nan seeing
anything
about Martin’s situation on the telly. Unless Zelgai Mahmood was making a guest appearance on
Ready Steady
Cook
or helping Jamie with a pasta creation, it would be outside her viewing spectrum. But she knew for a fact that every morning Dorothea devoured the tabloids along with her cornflakes.

The balls of her feet ached, having been slapped against the pavement without the support of a proper sole. Poppy marched up the path as one of Mr Veerswamy’s daughters opened the front door. Poppy wasn’t sure how many daughters he had, but she had met at least four. It fascinated her that they were all stunningly beautiful, clear skin, shiny hair and great teeth, yet Mr Veerswamy and his wife were not similarly blessed. Maybe Mrs Veerswamy was a real lithe looker before she started popping out little Veerswamys by the bucket load, and
spending
all day sat in her husband’s shiny Mercedes on her fat arse, munching cashews, while he drove all over East London pulling together various business deals. Who knows?

‘Good morning, Poppy Day!’

‘Good morning, Barika, Binish, Bisma, or Batool!’

The girl roared with laughter as she swished her long, shiny curtain of hair over her shoulder. Poppy knew all their names and could place them in order of age; she couldn’t, however, remember which name belonged to which girl. She started to walk down the hall. ‘It’s Bisma!’

Poppy laughed back at her, ‘I knew that!’ Of course it was, beautiful, blessed Bisma, with the looks of a supermodel and a dad that worshipped her… what good luck.

It was nice for Poppy to see her nan in her finery so early in the morning. By finery, don’t think of mink and cashmere, accessorised with strings of pearls. A better word would be, clean. A clean blouse and cardigan teamed with elastic-waisted pants, she was pristine! Poppy usually saw her at the end of the day. Her clothes and hair by that late hour would resemble an artist’s palette. It was as if Dorothea herself and the clothes she wore were food and mess magnets; before retiring for the night, she would be clad in everything from scrambled egg and gravy to jam and hot chocolate.

Poppy was sorely tempted to sneak her nan’s clothes into a bag and enter them for the Turner Prize. She would call it
Everything on the Menu
. Art critics for miles around would come and marvel at the originality, wondering how she managed to come up with the alternative genre. They would ask what her preferred materials were, she would tell them, ‘My inspiration is Dorothea Day, who spends the time either pissing herself or trying to convince people that she is the mother of Joan Collins, and as for materials, I favour whatever Mr Veerswamy has managed to get a good deal on at the cash and carry and is
currently
trying to poison her with.’

It was nice to see her looking so neat, more like her lovely nan and less like a crazy old lady that’s lost her hairbrush and spent the day chasing pigeons around the park.

‘Morning, Nan!’

‘Ah! Poppy Day! How lovely to see you.’

‘It’s lovely to see you too. You seem jolly today, any special reason?’

‘Oh Poppy Day, it’s good to be happy because life is just too bloody short!’

‘You are right, Nan.’ She hovered then, waiting and thinking what to do next, not entirely sure how she was going to shield her from the papers.

Nathan appeared from nowhere with a tray full of
breakfast
. The day’s paper was secured under his arm. It was Dorothea’s cue, ‘Ah, now, Poppy Day, there is someone that I would like you to meet…’

The usual rigmarole ensued. Nathan smiled at Poppy with a fixed grin, while trying to figure out what her wild semaphore and rolling eyes were trying to tell him about the rolled-up daily which thankfully never got delivered.

When Poppy got back to the flat, Jenna and Rob were
chatting
like old friends. It made her laugh, two more dissimilar characters with different life experiences you would be hard pushed to find, yet with her as their common connection they were drinking tea and setting the world straight. She managed to catch the tail-end of their conversation.

‘So, have you ever killed anyone?’ Jenna was wide-eyed with anticipation.

There was a pause while Rob considered his response. ‘Put it this way, I’ve never killed anyone that didn’t totally deserve it…’ He let the fact trail.

Jenna bit of course, taking the bait whole. ‘What did they do to deserve it?’

Poppy could sense her friend’s desire to know more, mingled with the fear of what she would hear.

‘Oh you know, just what you would expect really, stirring my tea the wrong way, giving me the plain biscuits instead of the chocolate ones.’

Jenna’s laugh was loud, unrestrained. ‘Oh my God! You’re winding me up! I totally believed you. I thought you were going to tell me some terrible war story or something.’

Rob smiled as Poppy walked through the door. ‘Disaster averted?’ His timbre indicating he had calmed slightly over the article.

‘Yep, thank goodness. I got to Nathan before he gave Nan the paper.’

Jenna piped up, ‘That’s good, mate. Ooh! Some bloke called for you and wants you to call him straight back. He said it was very important.’

‘Oh right. Who was it, Jen?’

She looked at Rob. ‘Who was it, Rob?’ This was typical Jenna; she could remember that it was important, but not who it was.

He filled in the gaps that she had left, ‘It was Tom Chambers, your local MP, no less.’

‘What did he want?’

Rob continued, ‘It seems he saw the article and, as your local MP, wants to know if he can help you in any way.’

‘Oh, well that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ Poppy was still trying to turn her actions into a positive.

‘Maybe, Poppy, just don’t go agreeing to anything without speaking to me first, OK?’

‘I’m sorry, Rob, about the article and everything.’

He shook his head slightly, smoothing his moustache with his thumb and forefinger. ‘It’s not your fault, Poppy. If I hadn’t made our position clear to you then it’s my fault, but I also suspect that you were probably duped slightly. Some of these journalists are master manipulators; they know their trade a lot better than you. They have ways of getting you to tell them what they want to hear.’

She could only nod in agreement, unable to tell him that Miles Varrasso had more than met his match.

Poppy went into the hallway and dialled the number that had been left, thinking that it would go through to an
answerphone
, switchboard or at the very least his PA. Instead a man’s voice was loud and clear on the other end. He answered quickly, giving Poppy no time to practise what she was going to say or even think about it. She reminded herself not to sound like an idiot.

‘Hello, yes?’ He sounded a little impatient.

‘It’s Poppy, sorry, Poppy Day. I missed your call earlier?’ She cringed. How many Poppys would he have tried to call in the last half an hour?

‘Ah yes! Poppy Day! Thank you so much for calling me back.’

The word that he gave the most emphasis to in his sentence was ‘so’. This told her all she needed to know. He sounded really, really posh and really, really loud; a combination that always made her feel awkward. It’s another character trait of the secret club, the one that Poppy had no hope of belonging to, ever. He sounded like the type of bloke a girl like Harriet would marry.

‘That’s OK.’ She cringed again, recognising ‘that’s OK’ was as moronic a response as ‘fine’.

‘Reason for my call, Poppy, is that I wanted to first offer my thoughts and prayers to you at this dreadful time. How are you bearing up?’

How was she bearing up? Barely, she was barely bearing up, but thought it might be inappropriate to say so.

‘Fine.’ She screwed her eyes shut and bit her bottom lip.

‘Well that’s good, excellent. Secondly, I wondered if you would like to meet up, to see where things stand and make sure you are confident that all that can be done is being done to try and get your husband home?’

His words were wonderful and exciting in her ears. He sounded so posh and confident. How could he possibly fail to get anything done? He had also said the magic words, ‘husband’ and ‘home’; a beautiful combination.

Poppy didn’t care that she sounded horribly eager. ‘Yes! Yes meeting you would be great, thank you. I need all the help I can get at the moment.’ She hoped that Rob was out of earshot, not wanting to sound disloyal.

‘Excellent. Excellent. Well, I have a surgery this afternoon and could schedule you in for an hour or so after that. How would that be for you?’

Poppy had to think on the spot. How would that be for her? That would be bloody marvellous! ‘That would be great. Thank you, Mr Chambers. I really appreciate this.’ Her cringing
continued
. What should she call him? Your Excellency? Sir?

‘Righto. Excellent. I will see you at my rooms which are on the High Street; at shall we say four p.m.?’

‘Four p.m. would be fine.’

‘Excellent. Oh, and Poppy, please do call me Tom.’

‘Right, OK. Thank you, Tom.’

One click and he was gone. Tom, her new mate, who was very posh, who said ‘excellent’ a lot, even if it didn’t really fit the
question
or what was being discussed, and who wanted to help her. Poppy didn’t care about the finer detail, he could have spoken any language, used any word, if he was the key to getting Martin back home where he belonged then nothing else mattered.