She's Out (3 page)

Julia strolled to the back door and looked out into the stableyard. The old doors were hanging off their hinges and even more rubbish and rubble were piled up.

Ester began banging open one bedroom door after another. Every room stank of mildew, and some of the beds were still as when the occupants had rolled out of them. In a few rooms clothes and
dirty underwear lay discarded on the floor.

Julia walked up the old wide staircase, where there was more peeling wallpaper; her hands were black from the dust when she had rested them on the rail. On the previous visit they’d used
candles to have a quick look over the place. Now, in daylight, it was even worse than Julia remembered.

Ester appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Go and get the cases.’

‘You’re not serious, are you, Ester? We’ll never get it ready in time. This is madness.’

‘No, it isn’t. I’ve already laid out cash for a bloody Roller and a chauffeur so we’ll just get down to it, and the others will be here to give us a hand. There’s
caterers, florists . . . I’m not losing cash I’ve laid out, so we just get started.’

Julia sat on the stairs and began to roll a cigarette. ‘So, you gonna tell me who you’ve invited for this celebration?’

Ester looked down at her. Sometimes she wanted to slap her – she could be so laid-back.

‘You don’t know them all. There’s Connie Stevens, Kathleen O’Reilly, and I’ve asked that little black girl, Angela, to act as a maid.’

Julia laughed. ‘She’s gonna be wearing a pinny and hat, is she?’

Ester pursed her lips. ‘Don’t start with the sarcasm. We need them, and they all knew Dolly.’

Julia looked up at her. ‘They all inside with her like us?’

‘Not Angela, but the others. And I don’t want you to start yelling but Gloria Radford’s coming.’

Julia stood up. ‘You joking?’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Well, count me out. I can’t stand that demented cow. I spent two years in a cell with her and I’m not going to spend time outside with her. What the hell did you rope her into
it for?

‘Because we might need her, and she knows Dolly.’

Julia began to walk down the stairs in a fury. ‘She reads aloud from the newspapers, she drove me crazy, I nearly killed her. I’m out of here.’

‘Fine, you go. I don’t give a shit if you do, but it’s a long walk to the station.’

Julia looked up. ‘Gloria Radford on board and this is a fiasco before we even start. She’s cheap, she’s coarse, she’s got the mental age of a ten-year-old.’

‘So, are you so special, Doctor? We needed as many of us as I could get, Julia, and I needed ones that were as desperate as us. Now, are you staying or are you going?’

Julia lit her roll-up and shrugged. ‘I’m leaving.’

Ester moved down the stairs. ‘Fine, you fuck off, then, and don’t think you’ll get a cut of anything I get. You walk out now, I’ll never see you again. I mean it,
we’re through.’

Julia hesitated, looked back to Ester, standing at the top of the stairs. Her wonderful face, her dark eyes, now blazing with anger, made her heart jump. She knew she’d be staying. She
couldn’t stand the thought of never seeing or touching Ester. She was in love with her.

‘I’ll get the cases but don’t ask me to be nice to that midget.’

Ester smiled, and headed back to the bedroom. The only person you’ve got to be nice to is Dolly Rawlins.’

Julia got to the front door. ‘What if she doesn’t come, Ester?
Ester
?’

Ester reappeared, leaning on the banister rail. ‘Oh, she’ll come, Julia, I know it. She’ll be here. She’s got nobody else.’

Julia gave a small nod and walked out to the car. She began to collect all the cases and boxes, then paused a moment as she looked over the grounds. There was a sweet peacefulness to the place.
She was suddenly reminded of her childhood, of the garden at her old family home. She had been given her own pony and suddenly she remembered cantering across the fields. She had been happy then .
. . it seemed a lifetime ago.

The bedroom Ester chose for Dolly was spacious, with a double bed and white dressing table. Even though the carpet was stained, the curtains didn’t look too bad, and with a good polish and
hoover, a few bowls of flowers, it would be good enough. After all, she had spent the last eight years in a cell. This would be like a palace in comparison.

Julia appeared at the door. ‘You know, we could call the local job centre if they’ve got one here, get a bunch of kids to start helping us. What do you think?’

Ester was dragging off the dirty bed linen. ‘Go and call them. We’ll have to pay them, though. How are you off for cash?’

‘I’ve got a few quid.’

Ester suddenly gave a wondrous smile. ‘We’ll be rich soon, Julia. We’ll never have to scrabble around for another cent.’

‘You hope.’

‘Why are you always such a downer? I know she’s got those diamonds, I know it . . .’

‘Maybe she has, maybe she hasn’t. And maybe, just maybe, she won’t want us to have a cut of them.’

Ester gathered the dirty sheets in her arms. ‘There’ll be no maybes. I’ve worked over more people than you’ve had hot dinners, and I’ll work her over. I promise
you, we’ll get to those diamonds, two million quid’s worth, Julia. Just thinking about it gives me an orgasm.’

Julia laughed. ‘I’ll go call a job centre. This our bedroom, is it?’

‘No, this one’s for Dolly.’

Ester patted the bed, then sat down and smiled. Just thinking of how rich she was going to be made her feel good, safer.

Mike Withey looked over the newspaper cuttings. They were yellow with age, some torn from constantly being unfolded, and one had a picture of Shirley Miller, Mike’s
sister. It was a photograph from some job she had done as a model, posed and airbrushed. The same photograph was in a big silver frame on the sideboard, this time in colour. Blonde hair, wide blue
eyes that always appeared to follow you around the room, as if she was trying to tell you something. She had been twenty-one years of age when she had been shot, and even to this day Mike was still
unable to believe that his little blue-eyed sweetheart sister had been involved in a robbery. He had been stationed in Germany when he received the hysterical call from his mother, Audrey. It had
been hard to make out what she was saying, as she alternated between sobs and rantings, but there was one name he would never forget, one sentence. ‘It was Dolly Rawlins, it was her, it was
all her fault.’

The following year Mike married Susan, the daughter of a sergeant major. His mother was not invited to the wedding. Their first son was born before he left Germany and his second child was on
the way when he was given a posting to Ireland. By this stage he was a sergeant; Audrey wasn’t even told about his promotion. He had sent her a few postcards, wedding pictures and baby
photographs. Susan was worried about him being stationed in Ireland and, being heavily pregnant with a toddler to look after and hardly knowing a soul because all her friends were in Germany, she
persuaded Mike to quit the army. He was reluctant at first, having signed up at seventeen: it was the only life he knew. It had been his salvation, it had educated him and, most importantly, given
him a direction and discipline lacking in his own home.

Mike’s second son was born on the day he found out that he had been accepted by the Metropolitan Police. He never felt he had traded one uniform for another; he had ambitions and with the
excellent recommendations from his CO, it was felt that Mike Withey was a recruit worth keeping an eye on. He proved them right: he was intelligent, hard-working, intuitive and well liked. Mike
became a ‘high-flyer’, an officer a lot of the guys joked about because he never missed an opportunity of furthering his career prospects. No sooner was a new course pinned up on the
board than he would be the first to apply. It was the many courses, the weekends away at special training colleges, that made Susan, now coping with two toddlers, suggest that Mike should contact
his mother again, not just for company but because she hoped Audrey could give her a hand or even babysit. Mike’s refusal resulted in a big argument. Susie felt his boys had a right to know
their grandmother as her own parents were still in Germany.

Mike took a few more weeks to mull it over. He might have been honest with Susan about his younger brother Gregg, who had been in trouble with the law, but he had not disclosed to her that his
sister was Shirley Ann Miller, killed in an abortive robbery. It had been easy for him to cover it because they all had different fathers, different surnames. He was unsure if his mother had ever
divorced or married each one, they had never discussed it, and his father had left when he was as young as his eldest boy was now.

Audrey was working on the fruit and veg stall when Mike turned up as a customer, asking for a pound of Granny Smith apples. She was just as he remembered her, all wrapped up, fur-lined boots,
headscarf, woollen mittens with their fingers cut off.

‘Well, hello, stranger. You want three or four? If it’s four it’ll be over the pound.’ She took each apple, dropping it into the open brown-paper bag, trying not to cry,
not to show Mike how pleased she was to see him. She wanted to shout out to the other stallholders, ‘This is my son. I told yer he’d come back, didn’t I?’ She had always
been a tough one, never showed her feelings. It had taken years of practice – get kicked hard enough and in the end it comes naturally. She didn’t even touch his hand, just twisted the
paper bag at the corners. ‘There you go, love. Fancy a cuppa, do you?’

He had not expected to feel so much, not expected to hurt inside so much as she pushed him into the same council flat in which he had been brought up. No recriminations, no questions, talking
nineteen to the dozen about people she thought he might remember, who had died on the market stalls, who had got married, who had been banged up. She never stopped talking as she chucked off her
coat, kicked off the boots and busied herself making tea.

She still chattered on, shouting to him from the kitchen, as he saw all his postcards, the photo of his wedding, his boys, laid out on top of the mantelshelf, pinned into the sides of the fake
gilt mirror. There had been a few changes: new furniture, curtains, wallpaper and some awful pictures from one of the stalls.

‘Gregg’s doin’ a stint on one of the oil rigs,’ Audrey shouted. ‘He’s trying to go on the straight an’ narrow, there’s a postcard from him on the
mantel.’

Mike picked up the card of two kittens in a basket and turned it over. His brother’s childish scrawl said he was having a great time and earning a fortune, saving up for a motorbike. The
postmark was dated more than eight months ago. He replaced the card and stared at himself in the mirror. It was then that he saw her. The thick silver frame, placed in the centre of the sideboard,
a small posy of flowers in a tiny vase in front of it. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. It was one of the pictures taken when she was trying to be a model, very glamorous. Shirley
smiled into his heart.

‘It’s her birthday tomorrow,’ said Audrey, ‘and you’ve not seen her grave.’

‘I’m on duty tomorrow, Mum.’

She held on to his hand. ‘We can go now.’

Audrey hung on to his arm. It was dusk, the graveyard empty. Shirley was buried alongside her husband Terry Miller. The white stone was plain and simple, the ornate flowers in
a green vase were still fresh. ‘Tomorrow she’ll have a bouquet. They do it up for me on the flower stall, never charge me neither.’ Her voice was soft and she no longer held his
arm, staring at the headstone. ‘She came to me two days after it happened.’

‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

She remained focused on her daughter’s name. ‘That bitch – that bitch Dolly Rawlins came to see me and I’ve never forgiven myself for letting her take me in her
arms.’

‘We should go, Mum.’

She turned on him, hands clenched at her sides. ‘She was behind that robbery, she organized the whole thing. They never got the diamonds . . .’

Mike stepped forward, not wanting to hear any more, but there was no stopping her. ‘No, you listen. That bitch held me in her arms and I let her, let her use me just like she used my
Shirley. She had them, she had the bloody things.’

‘What?’

‘The diamonds! She had them – got me to – she got me to give ’em to a fence, said she would see I was looked after, see I’d never want for
anythin’.’

Mike’s heart began to thud, unable to comprehend what he was hearing, as Audrey’s voice became twisted with bitterness. ‘I
did it
, I bloody did it. She got me so I
couldn’t say nothin’, couldn’t do anything, and then . . . she fuckin’ shot her husband.’

Mike took her to a pub, gave her a brandy, watched as she chain-smoked one cigarette after another. ‘No mention of the diamonds at her trial – they never got anythin’ on her
for that robbery, they never had any evidence that put her in the frame. She got done for manslaughter.’

Mike was sweating. ‘You ever tell anybody what you did?’

‘What you think?’ she snapped back at him. ‘She got me involved, didn’t she? I could have been done for fencin’ them, helpin’ her. No, I never told
anybody.’

‘Did you get paid?’

She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘No. Payday is when the bitch comes out. Bitch thinks she’s gonna walk out to a fortune.’

Mike gripped Audrey’s hand. ‘Listen to me!
Look at me!
You know what I am. You know what it means for you to tell me all this?’

Audrey lit another cigarette. ‘What you gonna do, Mike, arrest your own mother?’

He ran his fingers through his hair; he could feel the sweat trickling down from his armpits. ‘You got to promise me you will never,
never
tell a soul about those diamonds. You got
to swear on my kids’ lives. You don’t touch them – don’t even think about them.’

‘She’ll be out one day. Then what?’

Mike licked his lips.

‘She as good as killed Shirley, I had to identify her, they pulled the sheet down from her face.’

‘
Stop it!
Look, I promise you I’ll take care of you. You don’t need any dough – but I’m asking you, Mum, don’t screw it up for me, please.’