The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit) (6 page)

‘Well, you’re wrong. I’m not. I’m in a hotel for the time being. My home was never with you. You made that quite clear a long time ago.’

Aggie had the decency to look shamefaced but soon recovered. ‘Fine. If you let me have a phone number for where you’re staying, I’ll make sure the information reaches you. Also, I do think you need to see our doctor in Harley Street about your, er … well, condition.’

‘My epilepsy. It’s okay, you can say the word. I’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with it.’

‘Yes, your epilepsy. I’d feel more at ease if I knew you’d seen Dr Urquhart.’

‘As it happens, I called from India and wangled an appointment with my old consultant. The NHS is good enough for some of us.’

Her grandmother gave a sort of disgusted grunt, but the conversation had depleted the last of her energy, and she closed her eyes with a sigh.

Helen rose to leave. It was gone noon, and an intrepid shaft of sunlight had broken through the morning’s cloud cover. It fell on a swarm of hover flies by the open window, hanging motionless in the air like the unspoken words between herself and Aggie.

Turning the door handle quietly, she threw one last glance at the only grandmother she’d ever had, in a way. Aggie had her eyes open, and a weary smile appeared briefly.

‘It’s good to see you again, my dear.’

Mrs Sanders showed Helen out with a sullen air, almost slamming the door behind her. Outside she bumped into another woman who stared at her with an equally sour expression. Plump and middle-aged with short, coarse, iron-grey hair and thin lips, she was dressed in a tweed skirt and a drab olive-green Barbour gilet over a beige shirt, and she clutched a brown handbag to her chest as if she thought Helen was a bag-snatcher.

Helen did a double-take. ‘Auntie Ruth! I almost didn’t recognise you. It’s Helen.’

‘Yes, I know. What are you doing here?’

She hadn’t seen Ruth in years, nor Letitia, not since she’d graciously been invited back into the fold. She’d almost completely blocked out her old life when, on the morning of her eighteenth birthday, a chauffeur-driven car had collected her from her last foster home and brought her here. In Aggie’s dining room they’d made it clear that she’d been kept apart from her family for ‘practical reasons’ but they now considered her mature enough to understand the complexities of the family set-up. In other words, know her place. They were blood relations, and she was not. That even though it would appear they considered her family after all, she was still an outsider. The gesture had felt like a cruel joke.

They’d met her screaming rage and frustration with stony-faced silence. She’d adored Ruth as a child – strangely the memories of her aunt were stronger than the memories of her mother – and once she’d thought the affection was mutual, but of the three of them Ruth was the one who hadn’t looked her in the eye.

It was therefore a shock that her aunt looked straight at her now, and with undisguised hostility.

‘I came to see Aggie,’ she explained.

‘Why? So you can break her heart again?’

As a way of showing she didn’t care about any of them either, Helen had spent the following two years saving money to go travelling, then took off. She’d seen Aggie a few times during those two years, always at Aggie’s instigation, and had mellowed a little since that traumatic family meeting, but the sense of rejection was still there, inside her. Ruth’s accusation was too much. ‘I’m not the one who breaks hearts,’ she said, and tasted the acid of her own words.

For at moment it looked as if Ruth would burst into tears, but then she controlled herself. ‘Well, you could’ve fooled me.’

She pushed past Helen on the narrow garden path in a miasma of the lemon verbena scent she always wore and which never quite managed to disguise the smell of gin. Then she threw Helen a bitter look over her shoulder.

‘Whatever your reasons, we don’t want your sort of trouble here. Just leave her alone.’

Chapter Four

Helen hadn’t seen Dr Boyd in nearly six years, but he hadn’t changed.

‘Hello, stranger,’ he said with a smile.

‘Thanks for fitting me in at such short notice.’

‘I had a cancellation. How are you? I take it you managed to get replacement medication while you were abroad.’

‘I paid to see a doctor in Hong Kong and showed him my old prescription,’ she explained. ‘It cost me an arm and a leg, so after that I … experimented a bit. For the last two years I’ve been smoking cannabis. While I was in India I met someone who recommended it.’

‘Another epilepsy sufferer?’

‘Er, no, but he had a friend with epilepsy.’

‘So let me get this straight: on the say-so of someone who knows someone you decide to play around with your medication?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Lordy!’ He threw up his hands. ‘Have you been seizure free?’

‘Not completely, but I never was, not even with the tablets.’

‘Hm.’ For a moment Dr Boyd regarded her with a curious expression, then he shook his head. ‘Well, you’re clearly in one piece. However, as your consultant it’s my duty to tell you that experimenting like this, without any kind of medical supervision, is dangerous. You do know that, don’t you?’

Helen nodded, swallowing hard. She’d said to Aggie that she’d come to terms with her condition, but it was only a half-truth. Most of the time she managed to hide it, controlling minor seizures as well as she could, but the thought of having a major seizure terrified her. It had happened a few times in her life, and she’d either frightened the people around her or become the subject of their ridicule. And each time the shame of it had made her distance herself that little bit further from the world around her.

‘I haven’t had any major seizures.’

‘Hm,’ he said again. ‘I practise conventional medicine, but that doesn’t mean I completely pooh-pooh alternative remedies.
Epilepsy Action
has written about the connection between cannabis and seizure control. Since controlling these episodes is the goal, I’m happy to support you, although I think you should use it with your normal medication. I just can’t prescribe it on the NHS.’

‘Of course not,’ said Helen. ‘Anyway, I’d like to go back on the Carbamazepine, because, well, I don’t really feel comfortable buying weed.’

‘Fine, fine, we can get you back on the medication. I want you to keep a diary of seizures to see if there’s a pattern and if it changes, your general well-being, what you eat and drink. You know the drill.’

‘Sure,’ said Helen, knowing she wouldn’t. She’d tried before, starting each time with a certain amount of enthusiasm, then stopped, because keeping a diary was a constant reminder that she wasn’t like everybody else.

‘Include your interpersonal relationships this time,’ he continued. ‘That’ll give me an idea of your mental state.’

Helen thought of Aggie and Fay, and Ruth who hated her, and clenched her jaw. ‘My mental state is fine. I’m just not very good at forming relationships.’

‘Right,’ he said and typed something on the computer. ‘A word of warning: as always when you mess with your medication, there’ll be a period of readjustment. You may experience a higher number of seizures, and possibly even have grand mal seizures.’

‘Any new tips for how to avoid them?’

At that Dr Boyd gave a little laugh. ‘Same advice as always, I’m afraid.’

‘Okay.’ She knew the score. No alcohol. Pace yourself. Eat properly. Avoid getting excited because adrenaline can lead to seizures. Yada, yada.

She wondered if wreaking vengeance counted as getting too excited.

If so, she was doomed.

Back at the hotel, Aggie’s solicitor had left a message with Fay’s address. A map told Helen it was in Shepherd’s Bush, only a stone’s throw from her first foster home.

Trundling along what had once been familiar territory with a curious feeling of detachment, she felt as if that early part of her life had all been a dream, and India was the only place she’d ever really existed.

Fay’s home was a four-storey Edwardian town house which must once have been an elegant middle-class residence, but was now in a sorry state. Peeling plaster, rotten woodwork, crumbling concrete steps leading to the basement area at the front. Venturing downstairs looked like suicide. Incongruously, the brass knocker on the front door gleamed in the sunlight as if in defiance against the rest of the decay. Higher up, a set of curtains billowed from an open window, flapping in the gentle breeze. That, combined with the gleaming knocker, was the only sign that someone actually lived in this pile of old bricks.

Helen dug her hands into her jacket pockets. Who lived in this house with Fay? There was only one doorbell so it couldn’t be bedsits. Did she live with friends? Did she have a social life? A boyfriend maybe? Kids? Or did she, like Helen, go out of her way to avoid sharing too much of herself with others?

Her sudden interest in Fay irritated her. She wasn’t meant to feel like that.

As she debated with herself whether to knock or not, the door creaked open. Instinctively she turned away and pretended to be walking past. A couple of doors down, she ducked behind the thick round pillar to the portico of another house in need of renovation.

A middle-aged woman shuffled down the steps bumping a tartan shopping bag on wheels behind her. She stopped at the foot of the stairs to catch her breath, then unfolded the telescopic handle of the trolley.

From her hiding place Helen watched her. Was it Fay or one of her house mates? Her question was answered when the woman pulled up her jacket collar. The gesture was both furtive and familiar, and a tingling ran down her spine when she remembered how the woman in the blue car had done the same.

She was standing only a few feet away from her mother’s murderer. Her stomach churned suddenly, and her hands went sweaty inside her pockets. Now that she was here, nothing seemed quite as simple as it had when she left India.

Fay headed towards the main road and Helen hung back for a minute or so then followed her at a safe distance.

Walking behind her, she made a mental note of every detail, the quirks and physical features, the clothes. Prison had taken its toll. Fay was dressed in a shapeless raincoat and sensible, flat shoes, and her hair, once a frizzy, brown mop, was sparse and nicotine-grey, limp and unstyled. She hadn’t quite shed her prison pallor and walked with a slight stoop as if she carried the burdens of many people, or maybe the sin of what she’d done.

I hope you burn in Hell, Helen thought.

When Fay reached the main road, Helen found it was easier to follow her without being spotted. Here she could hide behind other shoppers and various racks and rails spilling out of the local shops onto the pavement. She didn’t want to confront Fay yet, just needed to find out what sort of entity she was before …

Before what?

Before she killed her?

Joe had said something like that, but she’d swatted the thought away. Obviously Fay had to pay for what she’d done, but even after years of thinking about this moment, Helen didn’t have a plan. And now, watching her had made her curious. Fay had known her mother. In fact, she’d have been the same age if she’d lived. They were friends.

So what
happened
for Fay to stab Mimi in the throat?

Helen fingered a Swiss Army knife she always carried in her jacket pocket. No one else was about; it would be so easy to just unfold the blade, plunge it into Fay’s back, and then melt away. There would be a certain ironic justice in that.

‘An eye for an eye’
and all that.

No, there had to be another way. Fay would pay for what she had done, but not like that.

Shepherd’s Bush Market was an open-air market, running parallel to the railway line. Helen passed under a painted metal arch and into the middle of the throng. A stall holder selling CDs and vinyl records was playing dub reggae on a portable stereo, and everywhere in this happy, bustling chaos the Afro-Caribbean influence ran high. The atmosphere took her right back to some of the places she’d visited while travelling.

Fay was still ahead of her, at a greengrocer’s. Helen kept her distance and pretended to be interested in tea towels. A sudden awareness made her turn around and meet the gaze of the guy manning the record stall.

Young, maybe a little older than her, he was dressed in jeans and a tight white T-shirt, which showed he was no stranger to working out. He had thick brown hair, which curled at the nape of his neck, and a small strip of beard shaped in a thin line from the middle to the curve of his chin. Clear, blue eyes. Helen supposed a guy like that would be considered attractive, if you liked that sort of thing. Sexy even.

He winked at her and smiled, but she ignored him in case he waylaid her and pressed her to buy something, another thing she’d learned while abroad. You were trapped if you met the eyes of a market trader.

A smell of fried onions and doughy bread drew her towards a refreshment stall. Next to it, two smartly dressed young mums were chatting, their plump babies slumbering contentedly in designer pushchairs. Suddenly conscious of her own dishevelled state, Helen ran her fingers through her unkempt hair as a spurt of angry jealousy surged through her. Life was so easy for people like that. How did they know what true survival meant? They’d never woken up in the dark, afraid and lonely, with no one to comfort them, never felt ostracised because they were different. And nor would their cute little babies when they woke up.

She clenched her fists to get her feelings under control. These women weren’t to blame for her bad luck.

One of them had left her keys and wallet on the counter behind her back and wasn’t paying attention to her belongings. It would be as easy as pie for a pickpocket to run a hand over the wallet and scoop it up unnoticed. Helen had seen this trick often enough and wondered if she ought to warn her, when again she felt as if she was being watched and turned around.

The stall-holder shook his head imperceptibly. At first she didn’t know what he meant, then her cheeks flamed. He thought she was a thief.

Trembling with anger and embarrassment, Helen tried to regain her focus on Fay. The stall-holder didn’t give up. He changed the dub reggae to ‘Pretty Woman’. His taste was nothing if not eclectic, but Helen saw it for the ploy it was and stalked off.
Screw that guy and his Roy Orbison album. His stupid little goatee looked like a gravy stain anyway.