Risking It All (31 page)

‘Fine. On his way to being a partner in a nationwide chain of money-spinners. There’s a little matter of being taken over by the Mafia, probably to launder dirty money, but hey! Jimmie’s happy, so who am I to quibble?’ I explained the reasoning which had led me to this conclusion. ‘Maybe at least one of those stories you always hear about Jimmie is true. Perhaps he did rule an underworld gang from behind that baked spud bar.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Ganesh. ‘You’ve seen
The Godfather
too many times.’

‘You’re probably right,’ I admitted. After all, I’d had second thoughts about Jerry Wilde being a murderer. My problem was, I concluded, I had too much imagination. It came from being a frustrated creative artist.

My gung-ho attitude to the Wildes lasted only until lunchtime, when I received a telephone call at the shop.

‘For you,’ said Ganesh, handing over the receiver.

I left the cigarettes I’d been stacking and mouthed, ‘Who?’

‘Girl.’

Girl? I took the receiver gingerly and put it to my ear as if it would explode and perforate my eardrum. It didn’t do that, but it gave me a shock, even so.

‘I want to speak to Fran Varady,’ said a firm young female voice.

‘Speaking . . .’ I replied cautiously.

‘This is Nicola Wilde.’

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

‘Hello? Hello?’ she was shouting into the phone at her end. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Where did you get this number?’ I croaked.

‘I haven’t got time to go into that now,’ was the impatient retort. ‘I’m phoning in my lunch hour. I’m at school. I’ve had to shut myself in the sports equipment cupboard.’

‘They’ve got a phone in there?’ This was some private school.

‘No!’ Irritable. ‘I’m on my mobile.’

Of course. Silly me.

‘I want to talk to you.’ She was on the offensive again.

‘Not a good idea,’ I managed, rallying.

‘Why not? You were hanging around outside our house the other evening, weren’t you? I bet it was you. You asked me for change. You knew my name. Well, I’m fed up with being left out of everything. I want to know what’s going on. I want to meet you.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘I promised your father.’

‘He needn’t know. Listen, I’ve told my mother I’m going over to a friend’s house tonight after school to do some homework. I’ve done that before, so she’s quite happy. I’ll meet you at Earls Court Tube station, at the foot of the stairs up from the platforms, Upminster line.’

A clammy sense of déjà vu swept over me. Fixing up rendezvous at Tube stations seemed to be a Wilde speciality. The only thing lacking was for Flora to ring me and suggest a meeting at Notting Hill Gate.

‘About five,’ ordered the voice in my ear. She was used to getting her own way. If she was feeling left out now over present events, it must be a first, and she didn’t like it.

I found myself meekly agreeing. Perhaps, after all, a subconscious urge to take a closer look at her moved me.

‘So?’ asked Ganesh as I put down the receiver. ‘You look pretty rattled.’

‘I am rattled,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go and hold a schoolgirl’s hand.’

It took me longer than I’d allowed for to get out to Earls Court that evening, and she’d arrived before me. I saw her as I walked towards the meeting point. She was in a crowd, but for me it was as if no one was around her. I felt everyone would be looking, everyone would see us together. Any of these hurrying regulars on this line might know Jerry, recognise Nicola, pass on the word.

My sister did not look pleased. She was scanning faces, frowning, and chewing on her lower lip. When she saw me, she just looked grumpier.

‘I thought you weren’t going to come!’ she greeted me truculently.

‘Hey, it’s rush hour, all right? Nor do I jump when you shout, okay? Just so we’re clear on that. You’re lucky I’m here at all.’ Curiosity overcame me. ‘What were you going to do if I didn’t turn up?’

‘Phone that number again and keep on phoning it until you did come.’

‘I bet you scream and scream until you’re sick, too,’ I said.

She looked blank. She hadn’t read the same childhood books I had.

‘Just for starters,’ I said, ‘how
did
you get my number?’

‘Oh, that.’ She tossed her hair. No longer in the wet rat’s tails as when I’d seen her under the lamplight, it was pale blonde and twisted in a mass of narrow curls. She had well-defined eyebrows and pale-blue eyes. Her nose was short and straight, cheekbones wide and pronounced, mouth generous even set, as it was now, in an angry line. She looked like my mother – our mother. Or as I remembered my mother all those years ago, before her illness. She looked more like her than I did, certainly. I’d taken after the Varady side. Grandma had repeatedly told me so. As for Nicola’s father, Mum had given no clue as to who he had been, but it didn’t matter. He hadn’t got to pass on his looks. This girl was a Nagy.

‘It was the evening you waited outside the house,’ she was saying. ‘Later on Ben Cornish came to have dinner with us. He was a bit late. Mummy was out in the kitchen cooking. I’d gone upstairs to sort my books for the next day. I heard Ben come and I went out on to the landing. I meant to lean over the banisters and call down to him. I like Ben. Do you like Ben?’ She peered at me in a manner I can only call hostile. Ben was the subject of a crush, clearly. She wanted to know if I’d strayed on to what she saw as her territory.

‘Never mind what I like,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

She looked miffed and chalked up a mental black mark again me, but she went on. ‘Well, before I could call down, Dad and Ben had started talking. Ben looked sort of shifty. They were whispering. So I listened. They didn’t know I was there. Neither of them looked up. I heard the name “Fran Varady”. Ben said he’d been talking to you. Dad swore.’ She seemed vaguely entertained by this.

‘Then Dad said that my mother mustn’t know. Ben said, of course not. He took a bit of paper from his jacket pocket and showed Dad. Dad said he’d call you; I mean, he said, “I’ll call her when I get the chance, but for God’s sake, keep it from Flora.” Then he took out his pocket diary and copied down a number from the paper Ben held out. Ben folded it up and put it back in his jacket pocket. Then he took off the jacket and hung it in the hall. They went into the kitchen to say hello to Mummy. I came down. I could hear them in the kitchen talking about some new wine or other Dad wanted to try, so I knew they weren’t coming back at once. I looked in Ben’s pocket, found the number and made my own copy. Easy.’

Now she definitely looked smug. Trains were coming in and out. People swirled around us. It was chilly and not very comfortable standing on the platform but it was still the best place. I didn’t know of a café around here and I could hardly take her into a pub. I suggested we walk up and down. It’s easier on the legs to keep moving, rather than just stand planted like a couple of posts.

‘Look,’ I said to her, ‘the bit of business I had to discuss with your father, I’m not prepared to talk about it to you.’

She thrust her angry little face at me. ‘Well, I’m fed up with being left out! Don’t tell me it hasn’t got anything to do with me, because I jolly well know it has! They’ve been talking about me for a while now. I’ve heard them whispering together. Then last night Dad came out with this crackpot idea that Mummy and I should go on a holiday abroad, right away, like now! I mean, it’s term-time. I’ve got a violin exam coming up. I’ve been practising like mad. I kicked up a fuss and said I wouldn’t go. They both looked so upset. Something’s going on and I want to know what it is!’

‘Have you asked them?’

‘Of course I have!’ she shouted. Then, more quietly and sullenly, ‘But I didn’t get anywhere. What can be so secret? It’s stupid.’ She stared at me. ‘You know, if I hadn’t seen you that evening, in the rain, I might have thought you were Dad’s girlfriend. My friend Naomi’s dad is always having different girlfriends. Her parents row over it. But my dad hasn’t ever done anything like that. Anyway, I’d seen you, and obviously you couldn’t be anyone’s girlfriend, well, not someone like my dad.’

‘I’m not your dad’s girlfriend,’ I said sniffily. ‘He wouldn’t be my type.’ Cheeky little madam. It just so happens several blokes have told me I’m attractive, and not everyone is put off by muddy boots, one of them laced with string. I didn’t think Ben was, for a start, and if I’d wanted revenge on her for the cutting remark, I could have taken it there and then. I remembered she was only just on thirteen and nobly kept silent. Only fight your own weight.

‘So, are you going to tell me?’ she insisted.

‘No, I’m not, and you can phone the shop until you’re blue in the face, but I’m not meeting you again. I’m wasting my time meeting you now. This conversation is going nowhere.’

I then made the mistake of adopting the superior adult approach. I ought to have known better. It had never worked with me when I was her age.

‘Believe me, Nicola, it’s nothing for you to worry about. Just go home and put the whole thing out of your mind.’

Whoosh! Did she blow up then! She actually stamped her foot. ‘How can I? Everyone treats me as if I were a kid, as if I were thick! I’m not a kid, I’m almost thirteen and I’m not thick! Something’s wrong and it’s been wrong for several weeks. So don’t tell me not to worry or not to let my imagination run riot or any of the other crummy things people have been telling me!’

Something wasn’t right here. I didn’t know how long Mum had been in the hospice, but I had only started looking for Nicola just over a week ago. Yet here she was claiming something had been wrong for several weeks, well before my arrival on the scene. Her parents had been discussing her surreptitiously for ‘a while’. The only other person I could think of who might have been stirring up muddy waters was the late Clarence Duke. All my old suspicion of Jerry Wilde came back. What if Duke had been on the track of Nicola before me? What if Jerry had found out and was panicked into drastic action?

‘Nicola,’ I began carefully, ‘does the name Clarence or Rennie Duke mean anything to you?’

She shook her head. ‘Who is he?’

‘Just someone I met the other day. I thought he might have been to see your parents. Hew – he’s a little thin bloke, drives a jade-green car.’

‘I don’t know anything about him,’ she muttered. She kicked at the ground. ‘No one tells me anything. You could but you won’t. But I know something’s up and it all started when I told Mummy about Nurse Cooper.’

I whirled round so fast I nearly stumbled over the edge of the platform into the path of the approaching Barking train, putting paid to my investigations altogether. ‘Who’s Nurse Cooper?’

Nicola looked surprised. ‘Oh, she came to talk to my class. We’ve had all kinds of people coming in, different professions, to talk to us. It’s the headmistress’s idea. Supposed to give us ideas about what we’d like to do when we leave school. Nurse Cooper came to talk to us about being a nurse, you know, and how long it takes to train and the different sorts of specialities. I wasn’t really interested because I want to be a professional musician. But she said she’d trained at St Margaret’s Hospital, and that interested me because I was born in St Margaret’s. So afterwards, when we were all chatting to her, I told her that. I didn’t have anything else I wanted to ask her but I felt I had to say something to her. She was interested. She asked how old I was and said I must have been born there when she was just starting her training . . . What’s up?’ She broke off and stared at me. ‘You look funny,’ she said.

‘I’m cold,’ I said. ‘And pretty fed up with standing around here listening to you. Did you see this nurse person again, after she spoke to your school?’

She shook her head. ‘No, but I went home and told Mummy about it all. I didn’t think she’d be really interested, but she was. She kept asking me if I was sure it was St Margaret’s. Later on that evening when Dad came home, she told him about it. It seemed sort of odd to me. Why would they care?’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, it was after that that things started to go peculiar. There’s been an atmosphere ever since. Really freaky.’

‘It’s been nice talking to you, Nicola,’ I said briskly, ‘but I really think you ought to go home now. You never know, your mother might ring your friend’s house with a message for you or something. You don’t want her to find out you lied, do you? Nor is it a good idea for either of your parents to know you’ve talked to me, right? I really mean that. As for whatever it is your parents have got worrying them, you have to respect their right not to tell you about it.’