Portobello (23 page)

'I think he wants to tell me about it but it must be in his own
time.'

'Oh, I fully agree.'

Wendy Stemmer had slipped off her punishing sandals and they
lay on their sides under the bed. 'He seems very fond of you,' she
said accusingly at Joel's bedside but with her back turned to him.
'Tell me something. Are you his girlfriend?'

'Of course not. I'm his doctor.'

'I asked because I've never known him so keen on a woman
before. I always thought he must be gay, though he didn't give any
signs of that either.'

Ella was so angry she took a few seconds before she could trust
herself to speak. 'Mrs Stemmer, don't you think you could persuade
your husband to be reconciled with Joel? If you tell him how lonely
Joel is, how he lives in the dark and now he's – accidentally, of
course – taken an overdose of – well, pills that weren't prescribed
for him?'

She watched the woman's face as a deep flush spread over it
under the thick make-up. Saying that she knew some of the sedatives
came from his mother, would do neither Joel nor her any
good. It was useless. 'Couldn't you try, Mrs Stemmer?'

'It won't be any good.' Wendy Stemmer bent over, perhaps to
hide her face, and eased her sandals on again. She looked up and
Ella thought she spoke for the first time with sincerity and maybe
from her heart. 'I've tried. I'm always trying. Last time I told him
he ought to see Joel he hit me.' She drew in her breath. 'Right
across my face.'

Ella had nothing to say.

Lance thought he had heard the last of Lupescu's death and
the destruction of Uncle Gib's house. If the police were
serious they would have done something about it by now.
The only condition of his bail was that he stay a certain distance
away from witnesses' houses, like Uncle Gib's new place and the
people next door. He didn't want to go near them so that wasn't
a problem. It wasn't enough to keep him awake at night, not even
in that uncomfortable bed in close proximity to the car tyres and
the broken bike. Last night a defunct electric mixer had fallen off
a shelf on to his head. Besides, he had the prospect of an influx
of money when Dave sold the rings, the bracelet and the gold
chain. He spent a lot of his waking hours thinking what he would
do with the money, spending most of it on Gemma but some on
new clothes for himself as well as an iPod, and a really good mobile
that would play radio, show TV and take photos.

Like callous landlords who require their paying guests to vacate
their rooms and indeed the whole building in daylight hours, Lance's
parents wanted him out of the flat for most of the day. If they had
had jobs themselves it might have been different but they were
always at home, watching television and exploring the Internet.
Their son wasn't welcome.

His father put it to him very plainly: 'If you had work it'd be
another story. But you don't and no prospect so far as I can see.'

Lance thought this a bit OTT considering neither of them had
jobs but when he said so his mother ignored the jibe and said, 'I
don't know how that poor old Gilbert put up with you under his
feet all day.'

The one advantage of being there was that there was plenty to
eat before he left in the morning and when he got home at night.
His mother had grown up in a family where there was a tradition
that if you missed a meal or failed to finish everything on your
plate and or ask for seconds, you were likely to collapse from inanition.
A story told by her grandmother and religiously passed down
the generations was of one of their relatives, known as Cousin Lil,
who had missed breakfast, as a result fainted in a train going to
Ramsgate and never fully recovered. So Lance was stuffed with
eggs and bacon and sausages in the morning, and plied with burgers
or Indian takeaway in the evening, while his mother made lunch
for him to sustain him in the intervening time. She might taunt
him with having no paid employment, though jobless herself, for
in her estimation there was no disgrace in a woman being without
a job, but to Lance, carrying a thick package of ham and cheese
sandwiches and half a dozen Jaffa cakes in his backpack, then
forcing himself to walk the streets and sit on park benches, staring
at passers-by and dozing, was what having work must be like.

He was leaving the flats at nine in the morning, the witching
hour at which he was banished, his backpack laden with food,
when two men got out of the police car parked outside and invited
him to accompany them to the station. One of them he recognised.
It was the detective sergeant who had asked most of the
questions last time. Lance said OK because it was useless to argue
and, besides that, it would be a change sitting at a table in an
interview room instead of trudging up and down Ladbroke Grove
and hanging about in Holland Park.

The young lady lawyer came back again and cups of tea were
brought. They asked him all the same questions all over again
and the other one, the one he hadn't seen before, said the DNA
sample they'd taken matched the DNA on various objects that
had survived the fire.

'Mr Platt lived in the house for six months,' the solicitor said.
'Naturally, he touched things. What did you expect?'

Some guy in a petrol station told them that Lance had paid for
fifteen litres of premium unleaded several weeks before. At first
he didn't know what they meant, then he remembered paying for
Dwayne's petrol when he fetched Gemma's stuff over to Blagrove
Road in his van.

'I never put it in no bottle, I never touched it,' he said. 'My mate
put it straight in his tank.'

They looked as if they didn't believe him. They asked more questions.
Then the one he recognised started asking him about Dorian
Lupescu. Wasn't it a fact that he was jealous of Lupescu? His girlfriend
had said she fancied Lupescu – was that true?

'She's not my girlfriend,' Lance said sadly.

A shaft of pain threatened to bend him double when it occurred
to him that it might be Gemma who had told them this. But no,
she wouldn't. Not his Gemma, his love, his sweetheart. Fize would.
Fize's pal what's-his-name would. Uncle Gib certainly would. Some
bastard had betrayed him. He was sorely in need of comfort.

'Can I eat my sandwiches now?'

'I don't see why not,' said the detective sergeant. 'We'll take a
break.' He looked at his watch and muttered something into the
machine recording all this. 'Back in half an hour.'

It went on for a few more hours but they let him go on bail
again without a charge and without any explanation, only to tell
him he must attend court when required and not interfere with
the process of justice. He could easily guarantee that; he didn't
know how to.

Ella had accepted an offer for her flat. It wasn't the first but it
was the best she had yet had and she was satisfied. Eugene
had kept telling her that it was of no great importance whether
she sold it now or in a year's time. They were not in need of the
money that would be derived from the sale. But, without saying a
word of this to him, she wanted to have a substantial sum of her
own to bring with her to the marriage and that she would have.
The flat had been hers for fifteen years and had been free of mortgage
for two. It brought her some gratification to know that she
would sign the contract for the sale well before her wedding.

Next day she had arranged to visit Joel but first, on her afternoon
off, she was going to drive over to the flat – she hadn't been
near it for the past fortnight – and bring away various items that
might as well be moved before the removers fetched the rest on
completion day. That would be after she returned from her honeymoon.
The place looked rather drab and dusty. But someone had
liked it enough to pay a considerable sum for it and after the furniture
had been taken out she would employ a team to clean it up
for the incoming residents. First she packed into cardboard crates
all the remaining books and, into suitcases, all her clothes. In the
bathroom cabinet were a lot of toiletries she would probably never
use but there was no point in leaving them where they were. She
loaded them into plastic carriers and, making several journeys, put
the lot into the boot and back of the car.

Eugene said he was going to buy her a new car for a wedding
present. Like many women she couldn't get excited at the prospect.
She was rather fond of her five-year-old car but giving her things
and choosing presents for her brought Eugene so much pleasure
she disliked stopping him. He was at the gallery but would be
home by six. Ella carried her boxes and bags indoors.

She was very aware that Eugene had a greater appreciation of
beauty and elegance than she had. She might like organising her
life and tidying up details but neatness in the home wasn't as
important to her as it was to him. She had determined some time
before that she would conform to him in these things. He did so
much for her and she, she sometimes thought, so little for him.
This stuff she had brought back from her flat she would put away
neatly before he came home, starting perhaps with the clothes and
all these bottles and jars.

There was plenty of wardrobe space in the house, including a
walk-in cupboard opening off their bedroom. Ella hung up the
dresses and the suits she had brought with her, folded sweaters
and laid them on the shelves. Then she went into the second bathroom,
well aware that all the half-used cosmetics and half-empty
bottles of shampoo and bath essence would never be finished up.
No doubt there were some people who would have thrown these
things out without wasting time, just as there were some who took
a garment to the charity shop when it hadn't been worn for six
months. She wasn't among them. Foolishly, she admitted, she
revolted against the waste of it even when she knew keeping stuff
you would never use was mere hoarding for hoarding's sake.

This cabinet, seldom used except by the occasional guest, was
probably empty. She wasn't much surprised to find a safety razor,
a tube of arnica and some wads of cottonwool in the top drawer.
These were the things visitors left behind. All the other drawers
were empty but for the bottom one, in which was a pack of some
sort of sweets. Sugar-free sweets, apparently. The packaging was
brown and orange with a badly executed design on it of liquid
chocolate being poured into a half-orange. Ella put it into the top
drawer with the razor and the arnica, and tipped her bottles and
jars into the bottom one. Carli again? She had just remembered
finding a similar pack of sweets in the secret drawer in the kitchen.
Carli was very absent-minded for someone so young, leaving these
sweets of hers all over the house. She would ask her about it next
time they encountered each other.

The books next. Ella loved Eugene's bookshelves. They had all
been made for him from golden-grey walnut and fitted to the walls
in the study and drawing room. There had apparently been a
dilemma as to whether these should be plain shelves or cabinets
with glass doors. Ella was glad he had decided against the glazing
because she much preferred open bookcases where everything could
be clearly seen to cupboards with keys in their locks through whose
windows spines were obscured or lost behind wood uprights.Tidy,
precise Eugene had arranged all his books in alphabetical order if
they were novels and according to subject and then alphabetically
in the case of non-fiction. Ella enjoyed just standing in front of
them and giving herself up to exulting in their beauty and the pristine
state in which Eugene kept them.

She had intended to fit the books she had brought with her in
among those already there. There were no more than twenty of
them, some kept from her schooldays or received as presents, for
Ella usually bought paperbacks and passed them on to her sister
or a friend. But, like most people who love reading, she found it
wasn't possible for her simply to shuffle the novels around on the
shelf and push the newcomers in among them. Each one she took
out she had to study, recall how she had enjoyed it or otherwise,
read its first line and before she set it down, congratulate herself
on keeping it so well. These classics from the nineteenth and early
twentieth century in their dark-blue or mulberry-red binding
wouldn't disgrace Eugene's shelves.

E. M. Forster's
The Longest Journey
had better go next to the
existing copy. They seemed to be identical editions. She was about
to move Eugene's own copies, one of them necessarily on to the
shelf below, when she heard his key in the lock. The time had
flown past.

He walked into the room. His expression was quite unlike his
usual pleasant composure, the look of a considerate and civilised
man, but frowning and aghast. He shouted at her. 'What are you
doing?'

She flinched. Before she could reply – she was on her feet now
– a transformation seemed to come over him, as if a hand had
passed over his features, wiping away the cruel mask and leaving
a gentle sweetness behind.

'I'm sorry, darling. I don't know what came over me. I've had a
hard day.'

'Who did you think I was?'

It was an opening and he took it. 'It's rather dark in here. A
strange person kneeling by the bookcase gave me a shock. Very
silly, I know. Still, we have once been burgled. Look, let me do
those books, will you?'

'If you like,' she said, still a little stunned.

'We'll go and have a drink first.' They went into the study. 'Why
don't we have a bottle of champagne?'

She smiled, took his arm. 'You can't be going to propose to me
again?'

'I will if you like,' he said.

'What are we celebrating, then?'

A lucky escape, he thought. An amazing stroke of good fortune.
If I had been five minutes – no, half a minute – later . . . 'The new
exhibition, Priscilla Hart's show,' he said. 'It's going well. I sold
three of her miniatures this afternoon.'

'Good,' she said. 'Let's celebrate for ourselves too. Not long to
our wedding now.'

He kissed her. Because he had been saved from humiliation at
her hands, had vindicated himself perfectly by pretending he had
seen a burglar, he felt a surge of love for her. It was going to be
all right. They were going to be very happy.

The shortening days of September seemed each one more beautiful
than the last, the sky a clear blue, the air as warm as on
a July day. Only it hadn't been like this in July but grey and cold
and constantly raining. Now, although the sun was strong, in the
shade you felt the chill of autumn. It was too late for true heat.
The time for hot days and mild evenings had gone by, and the
nights were cold. Ella noticed how tired the trees were beginning
to look, their leaves worn out by onslaughts of wind and rain and
now by belated sunshine.

The gardens in front of Joel's block were scattered with fallen
leaves, not those of the final shedding, which would come in
November, but the September drop, which relieves trees of their
weight. They crunched under her feet as she walked up the steps.
The lift seemed to rise especially slowly and, when she rang Joel's
bell, a woman she had never seen before opened the door to her.
She introduced herself as the day carer and, although she didn't
say so, Ella thought she might be responsible for letting more light
into the flat.